{"id":230,"date":"2011-05-19T10:24:15","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T10:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/?page_id=230"},"modified":"2012-01-31T06:56:36","modified_gmt":"2012-01-31T06:56:36","slug":"rena-klisouris","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/writings\/reviews\/rena-klisouris","title":{"rendered":"Rena Klisouris"},"content":{"rendered":"

Creative Non-fiction Review<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Slice Me Some Truth: An Anthology of Canadian Creative Nonfiction<\/em><\/h1>\n
by Luanne Armstrong and Zo\u00c3\u00ab Landale eds.
\nHamilton, ON: Wolsak & Wynn, 2011
\n402 pp., $29<\/h6>\n

Creative nonfiction or CNF is the focus of this innovative anthology, which involves the interweaving of real life events with a strong subjective narrative voice.\u00c2\u00a0 Luanne Armstrong and Zo\u00c3\u00ab Landale, themselves teachers of this genre, have a clear project:\u00c2\u00a0 to put forth the boundaries of CNF, while at the same time allowing the fluidity of the chosen pieces to speak for themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 They delineate CNF by the presence of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153an implicit understanding between the writer and the reader.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the writer is using his or her own name, and the names of other people, the reader assumes that the story is \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctrue,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 or at least as true as the writer can make it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 It is within this \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dualistic viewpoint\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of writer as both subject and object that the emotional power of these stories lies.\u00c2\u00a0 The benefits of this tightrope walk between imagination and reality abound. As the editors point out in the preface, the readers are treated to the effect \u00e2\u20ac\u0153of being dropped into someone else\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life.\u00c2\u00a0 They get to live that life vicariously, to learn from the writer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mistakes, or rejoice in their triumphs, with no risk, but with both entertainment and understanding as a result.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The editors settled on a classification system of categorizing the works according to main ideas.\u00c2\u00a0 The hybridization of pieces they called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fringes.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Ultimately, the main tone of the work determines its category, but, as we read in the introduction, editorial choices is balanced on hybridity.\u00c2\u00a0 I found myself returning to this introduction as I went through the stories to read the characteristics of each category, in particular the attention the editors drew to fringe qualities of individual stories. For example, Marjorie Doyle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bridging Troubled Waters,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is an examination of the cultural links between Cuba and Canada and straddles the physical present of Cuba and the writer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s past enough to be deemed travel writing with memoir fringes.\u00c2\u00a0 I was intrigued by the various elements that the writers uses to create fringes, and how their pieces could be classified (or not).\u00c2\u00a0 Rather than producing a stilted effect, the crafted, chimerical quality of the works only added to their vividness.<\/p>\n

Memoir was by far the largest category, and expressed the unique voices of the narrators as both characters in and authors of their own personal tales.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Chucarachas,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Madeline Sonik\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s teenage narrator navigates boundaries:\u00c2\u00a0 hometown and rough city, best friend and self, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153right now\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153back then.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Time is strangely morphed as the past revisited on the page is suffused with the bitter knowledge of the future.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I will not know the notoriety of this neighbourhood, considered troubled since the early \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc70s, nor that thirty years from now The Toronto Sun <\/em>will publish a set of articles about gangs, drugs and guns in this neighbourhood,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Sonik\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s protagonist states of Toronto\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Jane and Finch area.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But in 1975 I am fourteen years old and have no understanding of what a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsocial problem\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Both J. Jill Robinson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Out With the Old\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and Fiona Tinwei Lam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Play\u00e2\u20ac\u009d portray the relationships between grown children dealing with the helplessness of their young selves at the hands of their parents and the reality of their aging mothers and fathers.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Lam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s narrator, in re-learning to play the piano for enjoyment rather than as a forced routine, finds a way \u00e2\u20ac\u0153in face of my mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cognitive absence and the erasure of her memory\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6[to] restore what has been lost, if on my own terms.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 These pieces are balanced by the more humourous tone of Shelley A. Leedahl\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tits\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and Melody Hessing\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Post-Op:\u00c2\u00a0 A Hipster\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Guide to Surviving Surgery,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d both which use the female body to articulate experiences of joy and physical vulnerability.<\/p>\n

The other categories collected in the anthology move steadily outward with more stylistic variation from the personal viewpoint of the memoir.\u00c2\u00a0 In Lorna Crozier\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dark Water,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d we see the personal essay, and a more detached but equally vivid navigation of the past.\u00c2\u00a0 We are told that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the advantage always lies with the person who tells the story\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and, in contemplating her mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wedding dress, Crozier\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s narrator outlines the true dichotomy of creative nonfiction:\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I saw my mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dress through a young girl\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s eyes, not a grown woman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, but I think I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve described it as truly as I can.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Mark Kingwell\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153On the Ausable,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d presents the historical and metaphorical nuances of standing and falling, all through the lens of the narrator\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s precarious fall into the Ausable River.\u00c2\u00a0 The centrality of the narrator\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s physical experience of the river resolves the see-saw between philosophy (does the road exist?) and reality (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The road I was on existed, though I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell you how long it measured, except maybe in the numbers of the pain scale and even they are no help\u00e2\u20ac\u009d).<\/p>\n

Of particular note are the pieces which take stylistic risks.\u00c2\u00a0 Wayne Grady\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Getting Somewhere,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a literary journalistic weaving together of the stories of three women and their discovery of freedom in travel, is held together by strong themes and structure.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Susan Olding\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A Rake\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Progress\u00e2\u20ac\u009d uses the malleability of the lyric essay to delightful effect.\u00c2\u00a0 And Jane Silcott\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Natty Man,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a postcard memoir, creates an imagistic pull that subverts the traditional memoir.<\/p>\n

What is apparent in this anthology is the individualistic nature of creative nonfiction.\u00c2\u00a0 Despite this, one does not feel that the works are disjointed.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead, the strong narrative voice in each of the pieces engages the reader so fully, and the editorial choices are so well thought out, that we are each time left to carefully unfold each story as if it were a new map of a terrain we thought we knew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Creative Non-fiction Review Slice Me Some Truth: An Anthology of Canadian Creative Nonfiction by Luanne Armstrong and Zo\u00c3\u00ab Landale eds. Hamilton, ON: Wolsak & Wynn, 2011 402 pp., $29 Creative nonfiction or CNF is the focus of this innovative anthology, which involves the interweaving of real life events with a strong subjective narrative voice.\u00c2\u00a0 Luanne […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":77,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"authorpage.php","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-230","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":967,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/230\/revisions\/967"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}