Comedy fans of a certain age may recall the Monty Python’s Flying Circus sketch about the legendary highwayman Dennis Moore, a deranged Robin Hood who steals so much from the rich to give to the poor that he ends up stealing from the poor to give to the rich.
“Blimey,” Dennis declares upon realizing the conundrum. “This redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought.”
The Canadian literary world – long ago the domain of Robertson Davies, Pierre Berton, and Mordecai Richler – may be reaching its own Dennis Moore point, as indicated by a never-ending parade of awards, scholarships, mentorships, festivals and publishing opportunities directed at writers who are black, Indigenous or people of colour (BIPOC), all intended to help “under-represented” or “marginalized” writers.
That a careful analysis of the current state of Canadian literature indicates these “marginalized voices” are already moderately over-represented doesn’t seem to diminish the enthusiasm of Canada’s cultural Dennis Moores. Because if you spend any time in the literary world – at readings, conferences, festivals – you’ll hear people talk of the need to fight the white, male dominance of Canadian literature. You may come upon articles with headlines like “The Unbearable Whiteness of Canadian Literature” (an actual headline in The Walrus, the magazine that endeavours to be Canada’s answer to The New Yorker.
And if you are a writer looking to submit your work, you’ll see publishers’ messages like this one, from the small Ontario literary publisher Book*hug (best-known for changing its name from Bookthug on the grounds that the second syllable is racist): “We aim to ensure that our catalogue is reflective of an inclusive and multicultural Canada. We especially welcome work by Indigenous writers, writers of colour, LGBTQ2S+ writers, deaf and disabled writers, and women.”
A few years ago, I began keeping track of special measures intended to combat the supposed white, male domination of our literary world. The list I came up with included publishers opening up submissions only for BIPOC writers, literary magazines running special racially designated issues, a venerable national short-story competition being opened only to black writers, mentorship programs and conferences to help emerging BIPOC writers advance, a fellowship to support refugee and immigrant writers that’s only open to BIPOC women, a writer-in-residence position that’s only available to BIPOC writers, a new publishing imprint that’s only for BIPOC writers, and a heavily promoted and well-funded literary festival that’s only open to BIPOC writers, plus a few whites who check disability or LGBT boxes.
These measures – mostly funded through government grants, with some support from private foundations – are defended as necessary to counter the long-term effects of white, male hegemony.
As a novelist and former long-time book news columnist, the image of CanLit suggested by proponents of these affirmative action measures didn’t jibe with what I saw. So I went looking for evidence to confirm or refute the existence of this white, male domination.
What I found, after looking at 32 years’ worth of the shortlists for Canada’s most prestigious literary prize, the Giller, at the 115 books featured on CBC’s Canada Reads since 2002, at the line-ups of four randomly selected literary festivals, and at a half dozen “Writers to Watch” features on the CBC website, is that women and BIPOC writers have in recent years been over-represented among the writers getting the most visibility for their work. They aren’t over-represented by a lot, but they are certainly not under-represented.
I stress that there’s nothing sinister about this. Publishers and writers may be inspired by hits like Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes or Michelle Good’s Five Little Indians. And if women are over-represented among Canadian writers, well, don’t women buy more books than men?
But if I’m right that the white literary bogeyman is a figment of the imagination – and the figures I compiled in a long-form article for C2C Journal certainly point that way (please see the detailed figures in the accompanying table) – then why are publicly funded affirmative action measures increasing? Why are doors being closed in the faces of certain demographic groups?
Part of the explanation may be simple ignorance of Canada’s demographic make-up. The people who believe white writers unfairly dominate Canlit may not know that, according to Statistics Canada, the white share of our population was 87% in 1991 and, as recently as 2021, was still almost 70%. If you think Group X makes up a much larger share of the population than it actually does, seeing that group represented in proportion to its true share of the population would look like under-representation.
Beyond that, though, government diversity policies likely play an even larger role. Canadian publishers, writers’ organizations and festivals all depend on funding from federal, provincial and in many cases municipal governments. Prominently meeting diversity targets helps to keep the funding taps open.
I am not suggesting that publishers, agents, festivals or anybody else in the literary world should put together lists of books with an eye on the most recent census data. Nor am I suggesting that unworthy books are being published as a result of diversity pressures; the reality of publishing is that many well-written and thought-provoking works languish forever in slush piles.
But I do have concerns about public funds being disbursed on exclusionary grounds, for reasons that can’t be supported by any data, while creating an environment that encourages writers and readers to think in racial (and gender-based) boxes.
The original, full-length version of this article was recently published in C2C Journal.
Bob Armstrong is a Winnipeg-based novelist. His last novel, Prodigies, was published in the United States by Five Star/Gale after Canadian publishers and agents turned it down, going on to win the 2021 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction. Armstrong previously wrote a weekly book news column for the Winnipeg Free Press for 12 years.
