Atlantic Books

Atlantic Books

Locate me
FR

queer

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transVersing
For the Love of Learning
Breakwater Books

TransVersing is a fishy tale, to use the metaphor of co-crafter Daze Jefferies; it slips along, weaving six unique narratives of transgender (trans) youth in Newfoundland and Labrador. The beauty of the “fishy” metaphor is in its capture of the queer-ness of trans identities, its harkening to the ecosystem and culture of the province, and its use as means of connecting embodiment and place.

The stories presented in transVersing are diverse. They come from around the bay, with vernacular and local accents well represented; from life in the capital city and from experiences crossing borders. There are stories of growing up in small town Newfoundland, small town USA and small town Ontario. These stories converge in St. John’s.

TransVersing is a layered series of convergences really, both in narrative and in its creation. It grew out of a need for a trans-specific opportunity for expression and was born of a collaboration between the Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland theatre company and For the Love of Learning, an arts-based and skill-building program. First funded by a Canada 150 grant, transVersing was written originally for stage. It’s had three runs and continues to evolve in an iterative, collaborative way; keeping time with lives and loves, hopes and dreams, politics and passions of the six young writers and performers.

Before this collaboration was created, another had been tried. A few years prior, Gemma Hickey–local trans activist and educator and a household name for many–had invited LGBT (Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual) community members to stage a performance called “Queer Monologues.” There was keen interest from folks who identify as LGB but Hickey found few trans folks wanting to participate.

In a place where religion has figured prominently in community life, and where difference has been seen as dangerous, identifying as LGBT, or queer, in these parts has meant risking everything. And for trans folks, even LGB/Queer spaces have at times not been understanding of trans identities, trans embodiments or trans ways of being. It became clear to Hickey that trans people in Newfoundland and Labrador didn’t feel safe or comfortable or even welcome in many queer spaces. But if you know Hickey, you know how tenacious they can be!

Hickey approached Artistic Fraud, identifying that a space for the plurality of trans narratives was needed, that it was–and is–essential to foster spaces that give rise to trans voices. And so transVersing was born. Dramaturge Bernadine Stapleton of Artistic Fraud has helped weave these narratives into a cohesive piece of theatre they regularly receive requests to perform.

The strength and vulnerability of this creation is its magic, as is its distinctly local voice. The narratives presented raise authentic, and too often silenced, voices of trans people in the enclaves of Atlantic Canada. Following a recent performance, an audience member commented that having come out as trans in their small town, they were told that there had once been someone else trans in the community … back in the 1970s. Imagine the isolation of knowing that the only other person from your hometown who might have understood your experience had left more than 20 years before you were born.

Isolation in these parts is stark and true, and the feeling of being frozen out is all too real. But, this person says, they have been going home as trans for more than five years; there are now three young people in that same community who have bravely opened up about their own trans identities.

Sharing our trans and queer stories changes lives. Sharing our local stories creates community, builds trust and makes our lives real–and even normal–for the people around us.

And now these stories are being shared even more widely. The incredible team behind this project has worked with Breakwater Books to bring their fishy tales to the page, captured this time in stillness and no longer living within their transmorphic qualities or slipping through iterative presentations.

I imagine however, given the creative strengths of these youth, and of Artistic Fraud’s contributors, that while the book will freeze these narratives in a particular moment, their slippery, queer qualities will not be lost. This book is both education and emancipation.

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Big Island, Small
Maureen St. Clair
Roseway Publishing

It’s been four decades since African-American writer Barbara Smith raised eyebrows with her reading of an early work by a future Nobel Laureate in Literature. In “Toward A Black Feminist Criticism” (1977), Smith examined Toni Morrison’s novel Sula (1973), noting that the title character and her childhood friend Nel maintain a relationship that “from the very beginning, is suffused with an erotic romanticism. … The ‘real world’ of patriarchy requires, however, that they channel this energy away from each other into the opposite sex.”

“There is no homosexuality in Sula,” Morrison later summarily declared.

Canadian scholar Laura Robinson prompted a similar reaction with “Bosom Friends: Lesbian Desire in L.M. Montgomery’s ‘Anne’ Books,” a paper she delivered at a 2000 gathering of academics in Alberta. Offering an interpretation that rattled Montgomery experts, Robinson ventured that the fictional Anne Shirley lusted after female friends such as Diana Barry and Leslie Moore (characters in the iconic Anne of Green Gables and Anne’s House of Dreams, respectively).

“Montgomery’s texts subtly challenge compulsory heterosexuality by drawing attention to the unfulfilled and unacceptable nature of women’s love for women,” Robinson noted. “Because Anne’s various expressions of lesbian desires emerge but are not engaged, they draw attention to what is excluded, what cannot be said to be, in Anne’s world.”

I was mindful of the controversy surrounding Smith and Robinson’s work (the latter garnered the author hate mail) while reading Big Island, Small, the debut novel by Maureen St. Clair, who lives in Nova Scotia and Grenada. The absorbing volume chronicles the bond between Sola, a young Black woman, and Judith, a fair-skinned, bi-racial woman who wears dreadlocks. After attending a summer music festival in an unnamed city (“kind of cold that make people miserable”), the women discover their common roots in a small community in the Caribbean.

Rendered in the lilting patois of both women (in alternating chapters), the narrative ushers readers into a world of joy, risk, sacrifice, hope and grief. Here, Judith imagines the skepticism she evoked when Sola first spotted her grooving to a reggae beat. “She watching not with care but with judgment…I know those kinda eyes, that kinda stare—the stare of people wondering what this white woman doing dreading up she hair, trying to be more Black than white.”

By chance, the women meet the next day. Attracted (if warily) to each other, they attend another festival performance. En route home, they kiss under a star-filled sky. “I don’t want [Judith] to stop,” Sola remembers. “…We kiss leaning up against a fence.”

The embrace transports Sola back to her childhood on the tropical isle. “Wet grass touching bare skin, cool breeze blowing…sea licking ankles, begging me to walk farther out, dunk my head and swim.”

The tender moment is interrupted when a gaggle of children flinging stones and expletives exhort the women to “get a man.”

Emblematic of the race, class, skin-colour bias, gender violence and emigrant motifs that course through the novel, Sola is unnerved by the incident that Judith appears to take in stride. “I just suck my teeth when I realized [the children] yelling down at us,” Judith muses. “But Sola she shove me away like she realize I woman not man. …I can’t understand how Sola afraid. And then I start to think what if she shame …cause she think kissing women criminal. I start to wonder if she think I criminal.”

Sola and Judith mend the divide and go on to develop a nurturing friendship that enables them to better cope with the difficulties (past and present) in their lives. Perhaps not surprisingly (these days) in a novel that includes flashbacks to the formative years of girls, the spectre of sexual misconduct looms large.

Here, Sola mines a childhood memory: “I was…busy…dreaming about the new bicycle Mr. Robbie say his wife was going to send me. …He said Mrs. Robbie was grateful I was spending so much time…keeping him company while she and the kids were away.”

As with the “bosom friends” crafted by Lucy Maud Montgomery and Morrison’s Sula and Nel, Judith and Sola provide sanctuary for each other. Kudos to Maureen St. Clair for a heartfelt (if at times wordy) contribution to queer and questioning literature infused with a calypso flair.

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Authors Trevor J Adams and Alexander MacLeod

By 10:00 on Saturday, Room 301 at the Halifax Central Library was full of people waiting for Leo Glavine, Nova Scotia’s Minister of Communities, Culture and Heritage to kick off a panel discussion called “Reading Nova Scotia: The Global Attraction of Our Hyperlocal.” The discussion, moderated by author Trevor J Adams and featuring author Theresa Meuse, publisher Terrilee Bulger and author Alexander MacLeod, accompanied the announcement of the compilation and publication of “Reading Nova Scotia: 150 Books of Influence.”

By the time Glavine started speaking, just about everyone in the room was clutching a copy of the catalogue, which highlights a diverse list of books deemed influential and culturally relevant by Nova Scotia’s readers, librarians, and publishers. A quick flip reveals a wide range of books from all corners of the province, including El Jones’ Live from the Afrikan Resistance!, Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant, and Tom Ryan’s Way to Go.

Ryan was doing a reading in the library’s Creative Lab, while the Reading Nova Scotia panel was happening, so he didn’t realize he’d landed on the list until he checked his phone after the reading. “I was aware that this was going on earlier in the summer and then I kind of forgot it was happening,” says Ryan. “I never expected to be on the list, so to be honest it was kind of overwhelming and exciting, and just such an honour. It completely caught me off guard.”

Jones and Beaton were equally unaware; neither knew they had books on the list until we asked them for interviews. Luckily, they had a day to process the news before talking to us about it.

When asked to share her reaction, Beaton commented on the province’s remarkable literary contributions. “This is a great literary pocket of the country and anything from Rockbound to No Great Mischief, there’s some really fantastic stuff that’s come out of here over the ages,” she says. “Just to be included in the list of notables is very, very nice.”

Jones was pleased by wide range of genres on the list. “Spoken word is not something that’s typically considered literature on the same level as so-called real literature,” she says. “I think it’s a really nice move to recognize the importance of spoken word. As far as influence goes, if people consider what I do influential, I’m glad of that. When I started doing poetry, people thought I was being very political, particularly as a Black woman saying these things. It’s nice to see that things have progressed to the point where people appreciate the voice and are willing to hear the message.”

Our evolving literary landscape was something MacLeod commented on during the panel discussion, when he talked about the fresh perspectives of Nova Scotia life that are starting to emerge in recent literature. He specifically pointed to Ryan’s Way to Go and its protagonist’s experience as an LGBTQ teen living in Cape Breton.

“I’ve been quite dedicated to writing fiction for queer teens,” says Ryan. “I try to give voice to LGBTQ teenagers who, for many, many decades, haven’t been as represented in fiction as they should be. It’s been important for me to write about teenagers who come from small towns like the one where I grew up, and so I think it’s fabulous that there’s a title that’s for and about all teenagers, but especially teenagers who are questioning their sexual identity.”

L to R: Alexander MacLeod, Trevor J Adams, Leo Glavine, Theresa Meuse and Terrilee Bulger

For Jones, her presence on the list is additional confirmation that she made the right choice in giving her book a specific focus rather thanchoosing a range of poems on different topics. “I have poems about women’s issues, I have poems about poverty, I have poems about all kinds of things, but when I started doing the book, I was thinking ‘Well, you should probably make sure it’s a mix so that people don’t think you’re all about one thing,’” she explains. “And then I decided, ‘why should Black people have to apologize for being Black or water that down?’ So, in that sense, it’s a really strong Black book in that it’s an unapologetically Black book, a deliberately Black book.”

“I’m proud of that, and if it’s influential, the message I would want is for people, whatever you represent, do not be apologetic about you want to say and how you say it. I hope that’s one of the effects that people take out of it.”

Of course, the catalogue is just a starting point for exploring the literary talent coming out of Nova Scotia.

“I’ve always found Nova Scotia to be very proud of its art output,” says Beaton. “Musicians are the obvious example, but literature as well. We really hold our own in those ways. I think that even if the economy is falling apart, there’s no shortage of talent here.”

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Halifax-born writer, poet, and gender studies professor Trish Salah always knew words would be a big part of her future. Books and writing were an important part of her childhood, whether she was falling in love with a new book or reciting the plots of entire novels to the adults around her.

“There’s one moment that stands out for me,” says Salah. “As a very young kid, I decided to explain to my uncle who was visiting—a very patient man—what the plot of Lord of the Rings was. It was a kind of recounting in a very chronological order. I think he probably didn’t understand that I intended to speak for several hours.”

By the time she reached junior high, she was writing her own fantasy, science fiction and poetry. Like a lot of young writers, her work was derivative at first, but she continued to develop her skills and when she was in high school, she entered her first writing competition. Although she doesn’t remember the name of the competition anymore, Salah says it was a contest specifically for high school students in Nova Scotia.

Looking back now, Salah says the story was about “a young genderqueer hustler” living in a futuristic society. The main conflict of the story was “a seduction and assault by a group of decadent aristocrats.”

“When my mother and the school psychologist took a look, they were very worried,” says Salah. “I don’t know if it ever was sent forward.”

Years later, she thinks that story was an unconscious—or perhaps semi-conscious—attempt to achieve two goals: to use the writing conventions of the genres she truly enjoyed and to “think about the possibilities for living.” Now, when she reflects on the science fiction and fantasy she enjoyed most when she hit her twenties, writers like Angela Carter and Rachel Pollack come to mind. “They definitely reworked those genres to think about the social in various ways,” she says.

The master’s thesis she wrote in the 1990s, which she describes as a series of interlinked magic-realist stories set in the Halifax underground music scene and linked by poems, reflects those interests as well. For Salah, writing is about imagining the world in new ways and the simple pleasure of storytelling. It’s also a way for her to play with and develop new insights into language. She adds that she also enjoyed exploring “how language always does more than it seems, or than we intend.”

She didn’t submit any more writing during her high school years but she did continue to write. About a year after high school she moved to Montreal and enrolled in the English and Creative Writing program at Concordia University. She started submitting to small magazines, and got involved in a few different publications including The Moosehead Anthology and Index Magazine. Around the same time, Salah developed an interest in the way French feminists were using l’ecriture feminine and l’ecriture au feminin to “write the body.”

“I was curious as to whether or not this way of writing one’s self as a woman, into subjectivity, into literature and into the world might provide a pathway for my own self becoming legible in the world,” she says. “I think my first publication was in Tessera, which was a bilingual journal of feminist poetics and poetry. [The poem] was called ‘when there are three’ and it was really about the question of whether l’ecriture feminine could encompass trans women.”

Ultimately, Salah began focusing on poetry because it helped her sort out her thoughts, develop arguments and explore her relationship with language, including Arabic.

“I grew up in a mixed household with part of my family speaking Arabic,” she says. “I never really learned the language—my father passed when I was seven and that language learning didn’t continue. I’ve never really returned to it as a project, although it’s been marked as a kind of point of desire or a point of alienation in language.

“I guess I became interested in thinking of poetry as a medium to think about language and its relationship to what it is to be a person.” This exploration ultimately resulted in Salah’s first published book of poems, Wanting in Arabic.

Her second book of poems, Lyric Sexology, explores gender identity and the discourse around it. Although the book was published in the US in 2014 , it’s just been released in Canada by Metonymy Press (with extra poems!).

“I think it is also a kind of passionate reckoning with the very uneven, violent and difficult ways in which trans and genderqueer have been written in various archives,” Salah explains. “I say passionate, because it is about recognition and desire within distortion, and also about attending to the fact that trans and genderqueer people have had a role in making the discourses that I’m calling archives, if sometimes under very compromising or impossible circumstances.”

Salah’s next published short story, “It Can Grow!!!” will be included in the upcoming collection of science fiction and fantasy writing called Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy by Transgender Writers. The collection will be published this fall, by Topside Press.

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Adrian Smith grew up in a house full of secrets. Born in 1961 to churchgoing parents in small-town Prince Edward Island, he had what appeared to be a fairly normal life. His namesake father, an aloof man who favoured intellectual pursuits over the more “manly” hobbies of sports and drinking, had considered the priesthood before opting for a career as a child psychologist in the employ of the public school system, while his mother was a dutiful homemaker. The youngest of two boys, the author grew up adoring his father, while also doing his best to fit in with his peers. In many ways, this book tells the story of growing up and finding one’s place within rural Prince Edward Island for the two Adrian Smiths.

The story takes a decidedly different turn after the father’s death in 1988. While going through his father’s belongings, the author found photographs and written materials that led him to realize that his father had lived his life as a closeted homosexual. Having grown up in what he admits was a homophobic environment, the author went through an array of emotions, ranging from hurt and anger to eventual acceptance, with the latter only coming after years of therapy and introspection. Reconciling his father’s spirituality and apparent devotion to the Catholic liturgy proved difficult and led to many questions concerning his own sense of faith. As the nephew of a priest, this crisis of faith proved particularly disruptive for the author.

For many years Adrian kept his father’s secret. In part this was due to the stigma associated with homosexuality, but it was also out of fear of how this news would affect his aging mother. (While his parents slept in separate beds, the author believed his mother was oblivious to her husband’s true sexual orientation.) Following her death he began to open up, first to those closest to him and eventually to the broader community. He grew to appreciate the situation his father had faced, being born into a religious family in rural Prince Edward Island at the outset of the Great Depression, as well as the limited options available to him. With this, the sense of betrayal he once felt was replaced by an understanding of difficult choices. Besides, he reasoned, it was better to focus on the good he was told his father had done for the community working with troubled youth in the school system.

As the author came to grips with his father’s secret life and began the long road to addressing his reaction to this, sinister allegations emerged. As he shared his plans to write a book about his father with friends and family, multiple allegations of child molestation were levelled. Instantly the narrative changes from the sadness of repressed homosexuality in a society that did not accept it to the realization that his father, a seemingly pious man who worked with children for a living, was apparently guilty of such heinous actions.

This book was written as part of Adrian Smith’s healing process. Throughout, he attempts to understand why his father made the choices he did, the role of societal norms in all of this and how he was affected personally. It is, at times, very difficult to read due to its raw emotion and subject matter. Not only does the author address his quest to understand his father, he also provides an incredibly frank look into his own life and his ongoing difficulty with intimate relationships. Finding Forgiveness presents a rare glimpse into the long taboo subject of homosexuality in rural Prince Edward Island. As a book that addresses homosexuality, mental health, child molestation and the two Adrians’ relationship with the Catholic Church, it will undoubtedly raise eyebrows. Uncomfortable, but important, conversations are sure to follow. Many questions are raised in Finding Forgiveness and many remain unresolved. Such is to be expected in a work heavy on soul searching and self-evaluation. One thing is certain: whereas Adrian Smith was raised in a house full of secrets, his life today is, quite literally, an open book, and it makes for a most provocative read.

Finding Forgiveness
Adrian Smith
Acorn Press

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Ils sont… is a French-language picture book by New Brunswick singer-songwriter Michel Thériault, which he has adapted from his 2008 song “Roger et Mathieu” (from the album “Drôle d’oiseau”). Loosely inspired by friends of his, this story is a warm depiction of two vieux monsieurs (old gentlemen) who live in the narrator’s town, whose relationship began as friendship when they were boys and over time evolved into the happy, comfortable love they now share in their cozy country home.

Magalie Ben provides lovely, textured watercolour images that depict the couple’s comfortable retired life: working in the garden, making music, fishing, sleeping in a hammock. Curious animals appear throughout the nature-filled pages–an amusing element sure to please a child’s eye.

The poetic text is spare, merely hinting at the troubles Roger and Mathieu have experienced in their lives without naming them, leaving plenty of opportunity to look over the illustrations and reflect over what these may have been, what their lives might have looked like throughout those years. This is definitely not an action-filled story, nor does it aim to be. This is a loving portrait of two characters, a character sketch built on tenderness and affection.

Ils sont… beautifully approaches the topic of homosexuality for a younger audience–the story simply evokes the love between two people and the quiet happiness that comes from being together for many, many years–a love story that is precisely just like any other.

Ils sont…
Michel Thériault, illustrations by Magalie Ben
Bouton d’or Acadie

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Still No Word Shannon Webb-Campbell Breakwater BooksThe 2014 winner of The Out-In-Print Literary Award for queer & trans-spectrum, female-identified writers not previously published in book form was Halifax’s Shannon Webb-Campbell and her provocative collection of poems, Still No Word.

My favorite poems here echo the night-sky image of the book’s cover, with lines scattered like constellations across the page inviting readings both as discrete units and as part of the whole poem.

Poems like “Emotional Philosophy” play with form: “I haven’t opened your unpaid bills / I’ve read your old magazines and put your death certificate aside // I haven’t discovered the manuscript in your office. / I’ve made a photocopy”. Some of the antithetical statements ring true but others obviously contradict each other in thoughtful ways.

Still No Word’s poems invite contemplation of, for example, genetics in  “Chromosome Story” – “my parents,/ with everything they know, / hiding in / their living cells” – or commitment in “Because We’re Going to Camp Mockingee” – “your love is Atlantic / resilient and resounding /a place to live by / an essential to life’s raft”, which both alludes to and is reminiscent of fellow Haligonian poet, Sue Goyette.

Webb-Campbell’s simple profundity makes this collection an excellent gift for people you want to start reading poetry.

Still No Word
by Shannon Webb-Campbell
$16.96, paperback, 96 pp.
Breakwater Books, March 2015