Contemporary Canadian Women's Fiction Refiguring Identities

This book charts the significant changes in contemporary Canada's literary profile since the mid-1990s, within a context of the new national rhetoric of multiculturalism. By looking closely at a representative range of fictions in English by women from a variety of ethnocultural backgrounds, Coral Ann Howells examines the complexities embedded within Canadian identity. What does "Refiguring Identities" mean for these writers, given their individual agendas and the multiple affiliation of any woman's identity construction? All these writers are engaged in rewriting history across generations, and Howells argues that women's fiction negotiates new possibilities for cultural change, introducing more heterogeneous narratives of identity in multicultural Canada.

Coral Ann Howells is Professor of English and Canadian Literature, University of Reading, England.