Immigration to Qu'ebec has led to the decline of the idea of the homogenous national identity within French-language literary production and the creation of a new literature of multiple Queb'ecois identities, according to editors Ireland and Proulx. Concepts of diversity and hybridity run throughout the 16 essays contained here, which seek to collectively explore the way immigrant writers position themselves in relation to Qu'eb'ecois literature and society. A few essays explore the general contours of Qu'eb'ecois cinema and theater in relation to these questions, but the majority are devoted to more focused examinations of particular writers of novels, short stories, and poems.

Immigration to Qu'ebec has led to the decline of the idea of the homogenous national identity within French-language literary production and the creation of a new literature of multiple Queb'ecois identities, according to editors Ireland and Proulx. Concepts of diversity and hybridity run throughout the 16 essays contained here, which seek to collectively explore the way immigrant writers position themselves in relation to Qu'eb'ecois literature and society. A few essays explore the general contours of Qu'eb'ecois cinema and theater in relation to these questions, but the majority are devoted to more focused examinations of particular writers of novels, short stories, and poems.

In examining a number of francophone Montréal novels from 1960 to 2005, this interdisciplinary study considers the ways in which these connect with material landscapes to produce a city of neighbourhoods. In so doing, it reflects on how Montréal has been seen as both home and not home for francophone Quebecers. Morgan offers an overview of the fiction; examines micro and macro geographies of Montréal, and identifies some key literary trends. In so doing, it reflects on the importance of the imaginary in our experiencing and understanding of the urban.

Making It Like a Man: Canadian Masculinities in Practice is a collection of essays on the practice of masculinities in Canadian arts and cultures, where to “make it like a man” is to participate in the cultural, sociological, and historical fluidity of ways of being a man in Canada, from the country’s origins in nineteenth-century Victorian values to its immersion in the contemporary post-modern landscape. The book focuses on the ways Canadian masculinities have been performed and represented through five broad themes: colonialism, nationalism, and transnationalism; emotion and affect; ethnic and minority identities; capitalist and domestic politics; and the question of men’s relationships with themselves and others. Chapters include studies of well-known and more obscure figures in the Canadian arts and culture scenes, such as visual artist Attila Richard Lukacs; writers Douglas Coupland, Barbara Gowdy, Simon Chaput, Thomas King, and James De Mille; filmmakers Clement Virgo, Norma Bailey, John N. Smith, and Frank Cole; as well as familiar and not-so-familiar tokens of Canadian masculinity such as the hockey hero, the gangsta rapper, the immigrant farmer, and the drag king. Making It Like a Man is the first book of its kind to explore and critique historical and contemporary masculinities in Canada with a special focus on artistic and cultural production and representation. It is concerned with mapping some of the uniquely Canadian places and spaces in the international field of masculinity studies, and will be of interest to academic and culturally informed audiences.

This book examines the life and art of those contemporary artists who by force or by choice find themselves on other shores. It argues that the exilic challenge enables the émigré artist to (re)establish new artistic devices, new laws and a new language of communication in both his everyday life and his artistic work.

What is the relationship between migration and politics in Quebec? How did French Canadians’ activities in the global south influence future debates about migration and Quebec society? How did migrants, in turn, shape debates about language, class, nationalism and sexuality? A Place in the Sun explores these questions through overlapping histories of Quebec and Haiti. From the 1930s to the 1950s, French-Canadian and Haitian cultural and political elites developed close intellectual bonds and large numbers of French-Canadian missionaries began working in the country. Through these encounters, French-Canadian intellectual and religious figures developed an image of Haiti that would circulate widely throughout Quebec and have ongoing cultural ramifications. After first exploring French-Canadian views of Haiti, Sean Mills reverses the perspective by looking at the many ways that Haitian migrants intervened in and shaped Quebec society. As the most significant group seen to integrate into francophone Quebec, Haitian migrants introduced new perspectives into a changing public sphere during decades of political turbulence. By turning his attention to the ideas and activities of Haitian taxi drivers, exiled priests, aspiring authors, dissident intellectuals, and feminist activists, Mills reconsiders the historical actors of Quebec intellectual and political life, and challenges the traditional tendency to view migrants as peripheral to Quebec history. Ranging from political economy to discussions about sexuality, A Place in the Sun demonstrates the ways in which Haitian migrants opened new debates, exposed new tensions, and forever altered Quebec society.

In a brilliant history of a turbulent time and place, Mills pulls back the curtain on the decade s activists and intellectuals, showing their engagement both with each other and with people from around the world. He demonstrates how activists of different backgrounds and with different political aims drew on ideas of decolonization to rethink the meanings attached to the politics of sex, race, and class and to imagine themselves as part of a broad transnational movement of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist resistance. The temporary unity forged around ideas of decolonization came undone in the 1970s, however, as many were forced to come to terms with the contradictions and ambiguities of applying ideas of decolonization in Quebec. From linguistic debates to labour unions, and from the political activities of citizens in the city s poorest neighbourhoods to its Caribbean intellectuals, The Empire Within is a political tour of Montreal that reconsiders the meaning and legacy of the city s dissident traditions. It is also a fascinating chapter in the history of postcolonial thought.

This book argues that contemporary Haitian literature historicizes the political and environmental problems raised by the 2010 earthquake by building on texts of earlier generations. It contends that this literary “eco-archive” challenges universalizing narratives of the Anthropocene with depictions of migration and refuge within Haiti and around the Americas.

Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat is one of the most recognized writers today. Her debut novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, was an Oprah Book Club selection, and works such as Krik? Krak! and Brother, I’m Dying have earned her a MacArthur "genius" grant and National Book Award nominations. Yet despite international acclaim and the relevance of her writings to postcolonial, feminist, Caribbean, African diaspora, Haitian, literary, and global studies, Danticat’s work has not been the subject of a full-length interpretive literary analysis until now. In Edwidge Danticat: The Haitian Diasporic Imaginary, Nadège T. Clitandre offers a comprehensive analysis of Danticat’s exploration of the dialogic relationship between nation and diaspora. Clitandre argues that Danticat—moving between novels, short stories, and essays—articulates a diasporic consciousness that acts as a form of social, political, and cultural transformation at the local and global level. Using the echo trope to approach Danticat’s narratives and subjects, Clitandre effectively navigates between the reality of diaspora and imaginative opportunities that diasporas produce. Ultimately, Clitandre calls for a reconstitution of nation through a diasporic imaginary that informs the way people who have experienced displacement view the world and imagine a more diverse, interconnected, and just future.

Kim Thúy is a literary phenomenon, rising in her first decade of writing to a level of international recognition that few Québécois writers ever attain. The Vietnamese-born author’s novels have garnered literary prize recognition and have been translated from French into twenty-nine languages in nearly forty countries. Touching Beauty is the first collection to focus solely on Thúy and her economical yet poetic storytelling style that expresses both the traumatic and the beautiful. Her writings, which manage to be culturally specific all while speaking to the fundamentals of the human condition, are examined within the context of what is known as migrant literature in Canada and are situated within the history of Vietnamese literature in French that grew out of the colonial period. Chapters explore food, identity, gender, and the role of writing in Thúy’s life and work. Thúy herself contributes an unpublished poem and an extended interview that focus on her ongoing struggle to find, and write, beauty amidst war, migration, poverty, and loss. Touching Beauty maps the themes that have, to date, animated a literary career of global relevance and enduring value and encourages a deeper appreciation of Thúy’s writing.