To an immigrant Canadian, it is a very tough question ‘Which are the best novels in Canadian Literature’ or ‘Who are the most celebrated poets of the country?’ or ‘Who are the most loved Canadian memoirists?’ or ‘Which playwrights overwhelmed the nation?’ Is it easy to reply for an immigrant to ask, ‘Who are the frequently uttered poetic lines written on Canadian soil?’ ‘Which New Brunswick writer has conquered the readership to the farthest west of Vancouver? ‘Who are the First Nation major authors of Canada?’ All these are unbelievably tough because an immigrant does have his or her own literature, and it is not that easy to cope with new literature in a very short time. More than that, Canadian literature, though written in English, is possibly not on any curriculum outside Canada. So, when Canada becomes one’s land, it becomes challenging to merge with it, to grab from its culture, and to dive into its literature. And to speak the truth, nothing happened differently to me, an enthusiast of Bengali literature, who migrated from Dhaka, a far-away South Asian city, frequently focused in Canadian media for primarily negative reasons.
Before leaving for the North American city in 2013, we only knew some names of Canadian fictionists. The names of the Canadian fiction writers that we crossed back home included Michael Ondaatje, Rohinton Mistry, and Yann Martel, and who else? The South Asian connections between the earlier two an
‘Life of Pi,’ set in a sub-continent context, were possibly the components that caused some sort of interest in me and in many like us. The international reputation of Carol Shields or Margaret Atwood might climb the reading table of a Bengali reader also. But how frequent was that? Or before the 2013 Nobel, how many Bengali readers and writers were truly acquainted with the works of Alice Munro? When the bigwigs of world literature fall upon our own way, it does not sound easy to discover their recent powerful works. Nothing different happens when writers emerging within the borders of my own vast land, named ‘Canada’ get included among those dignitaries.
Let me confess first. I was a man of literature and, more than that, a man of novels. My enthusiasm was so sky-high that in 2003, I initiated a website on the novels of Bangladesh. But what a sorry saga that I do not know even a little about the novel genre of my new land! I cannot even try to know even, because whenever I do make any effort to know, the question hovers over me, how much can I know at this post-fifty age? And it seemed very impractical to start with zero at this stage of life. And with almost knowing nothing more in this regard, I had spent the first two years of my Toronto life.
By this time, the names like Alice Munro for her getting the Nobel and Margaret Atwood for her coverage in the international media came up repeatedly. I dared to look at their books, but I dared not dive into their works. Hundreds of thousands of books by Canadian writers are shelved in the one hundred branches of Toronto Public Library (TPL), but I could not reach them. For
the previously inconceivable services of TPL, I can now hold any of the titles online or can do, for up to fifty, pick those from my nearby branch, but I could not utilise them. Thousands of books are kept in the bookstores, but I could not touch them. It was not that they were expensive because used books at low prices are available at Toronto stores, but I could not love them. I, Subrata Kumar Das, who did have a personal library of more than five thousand books in my Dhaka home and wrote enormously on Bangla literature, especially on Bengali novels, could not leaf through the Toronto books because they seemed to me very unfathomable. Because I always believe a book is actually not an individual book in itself. A book is a part of the whole work of the author. A book is a part of the entire genre. A book’s significance is indebted to creating the complete literature written in that language.
In such a dissatisfactory and unhealthy status of mind, one day, I did a tremendous job. I did not know beforehand that it was going to be enormous. The tremendousness erupted through a stoutness of mind. What was that?
But before that, let me tell you about the preparation for that moment. After two years of my stay in the new land, I started working on Canadian Literature. I started because I had no other alternative but to start. I started because, as a man of literature, I could bear my ignorance no more. My plan grew in me in such a way that I had to do something which would eradicate the obstacles on my way to penetrating Canadian literature.
More than that, I envisioned writing on Canadian Literature, popularly known as CanLit. As there was almost nothing in Bengali on Canadian Literature, this world full of assets started waving to me from afar. I knew CanLit was unknown to me and millions like me. A desire to do something which would help those millions to easily access the literature of Canada began to spring in me. I knew well my Bengali fellows were aware of the literature of England and America and even that of Russia, America, France, or even Germany; even the language of that literature, not English, but Canadian literature, remained to them unknown though the lion’s share of it is composed in the language that is known to the literati of Bangladesh.
With this view in mind, for about six months, I have been browsing Canadian literature, especially novels, as I am more comfortable with this genre through the internet. I started leafing through some books, borrowing from the library. Like a collegiate student, I began to take notes down on them. Alongside many other social and literary activities, I was secretly enjoying the discoveries of a mere boy in a newer world. But I realised that development could not be achieved as expected. From the hundreds of unknown writers from the hundreds of never-heard-of great books, it was not very easy for me to keep pace. And at last, that sweetest morning came in my life when I, having no significant income at all, decided to buy a bunch of books. I decided so because I knew if the books lay before me all the time, it would be easier to befriend them.
On a weekend morning, I decided to visit a nearby Value Village on Danforth, where many used things, along with books, are sold. I had no hurry. Standing before the shelves of fiction, I began to look at the back flaps. Among the many, I began to select the ones by Canadians. After someone hours, I found my basket full of Canadian books, mostly novels. Now was the time to be selective. I picked the award-winning ones and found that the number was almost twenty. With a satiated soul, I discovered myself as a saint, with nothing around me, having nothing else in me. Only books and books written by Canadian writers. I paid at the counter and took a TTC bus. Taking a seat in a quiet corner at the back, I brought out all the books one after another. I returned home, and my wife found me with special brightness. My journey with Canadian novels started.
For the next few days, my only job was to google the books and their writers, take notes, and do cross-references. It was a pleasant journey I had made after a couple of years.
Unlike the general assumption, the looks and conditions of the books I had bought were not any oldish. Most of them were in better condition than the books of the public library. Returning home, I put them with much care on my bedside table. The whole table, though small in size, appeared to me something like a big flower bouquet. Whenever I stayed near that, I bowed down over them or took a flower out of the bunch and got its fragrance.
Margaret Atwood’s ‘Alias Grace,’ Alice Munro’s ‘Runaway,’ Michael Ondaatjee’s ‘The Skin of a Lion,’ Rohinton Mistry’s ‘A Fine Balance,’ M. G. Vassanji’s ‘The Assassin’s Son’ began to dazzle on my table. Gabrielle Roy, Anne Michaels, and George Elliott Clarke accompanied them. Mostly fiction, mostly novels, as this genre draws me more all the time.
But gradually, now I have got smarter. Now I dared to borrow books of CanLit from the Toronto Public Library. The previous inconvenience had been conquered by now. Reading CanLit, or at least swimming into them, had been a pleasure by then. All these positive nods allowed me to welcome the other creations by the authors who had already visited my home.
So, Margaret Atwood’s ‘Survival’ walked to my home from the Dawes Road branch, my home branch. I browsed; I made several attempts; I tried to get into what Atwood actually wanted to say in her 1972 book, considered a milestone in shaping CanLit in the real sense. And after some days, I understood that I had understood nothing. But I got elated to get some flicks on the timelines that had made the CanLit as we see now.
So, Atwood’s ‘Hag-Seed’ (2016) also walked my poor abode. All my searches encouraged me to read that as it was a modern retelling of William Shakespeare’s ‘Tempest.’ The novelisation of the four-hundred-year-old play had made the news in the media. Hag-Seed was one among the other four in The Winter’s
Tale, The Taming of the Shrew, Othello, and Macbeth. Some more were expected to come out later. But sorrowfully, I was little able to get a taste of the new creation of Canada’s legendary literary star though I was happy to know that in the fictionalised recreation of Shakespearean plays, one wordsmith was from Canada, my present land, the land I possibly love most.
Neither Alice Munro could draw my attention. I tried to understand my failure. The points that came up before me included: i) I don’t know the landscape of many of her stories; ii) the characters of her stories don’t seem to be very familiar; iii) the psychologies of the characters are different from the Bengali minds; etcetera. But by then, I had learned a huge amount of things about Munro. I knew her ‘Lives of Girls and Women’ is not a compilation of stories; rather, that is a novel. Many have defined the book as the only novel of the only Nobel-for- literature-winning from Canada. It is autobiographical, but many said that it is not a truly biographical one. The protagonist of the book is Del Jordan, an adolescent girl who was brought up in the Ontario area. And thus, the ‘Bildungsroman’ or ‘the portrayal of the artist as a young woman’ provided me with much enlightenment as this feature of any novel attracts me more. All the major ‘Bildungsroman’ novels that I have loved to read time and again got a new member in the list.
By then, I had learned that in Canada, there are a good number of writers who represent the whole nation or a city and work for national or community arts. I already knew George Elliott
Clarke as the parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada. I also knew that Clarke had been the Poet Laureate of Toronto City since 2012 and got the new appointment only in January 2016. I attempted my copy of his novel ‘George and Rue,’ published in 2005. I wondered if George represented the black community. I felt happy that George’s stories and poems hovered over the arrival of black people in Nova Scotia hundreds of years before.
By then, I had learned that Anne Michales had been the Toronto Poet Laureate since January 2016. And so when I saw her ‘Fugitive Pieces’ in the bookstore, I didn’t hesitate to spare a second lest any second customer might bag that. I leafed through it, but I failed to get impassioned to go through it. I felt sad that I could not love the novel, which had received at least twelve awards. I felt desolate that I was not worthy to enjoy a Trillium Book Award-winning, City of Toronto Book Award-winning novel. But I also had many reasons for not liking them. So I did not get completely frustrated, nor did I give up my whole project.
Days passed by, but those days were not like the days previously passed when I had no knowledge of CanLit. Many new insights began to embellish me with many-faced knowledge regarding the literature of my new country. I began to realise that I would also be able to make a ‘can.’
The collection that I have brought helped me a lot to start a journey. It was not more than twenty, but it gave me enormous
support to go forth. I read one or two books by an individual writer, but I studied huge stuff online about him or her. Taking notes on them helped me develop my insight. I began to discover the thin invisible threads among them, began to connect the threads between the writers, and began to understand their status in the whole bulk of Canadian Literature.
My thirst began to rise, as is the general feature to take new steps. To speed up that journey, Nilima, my wife, accompanied me after some days. It was also a ValueVillage shop around Eglington Square.
On my first visit to buy CanLit books, I was an unknown in a new land – almost no writers on the big shelves appeared known to me, and almost no book seemed that known to me. But today, things have changed. Among the many writers shelved across, I got some very much acquainted with me; many of the books sounded familiar.
On the previous day, only two hands were to carry, but this time four hands were ready to carry the goldmines. We carried them home, fondled them with much love, and caressed them with great care.
Now the big volumes of Don Gillmor’s ‘Kanata,’ Laurence Hill’s ‘The Illegal,’ Gabrielle Roy’s ‘The Tin Flute,’ David Adams Richards ‘Mercy Among the Children,’ Anne Hebert’s
‘Kamouraska,’ Noah Richler’s ‘This is My Country, What’s Yours?’ began to glitter on my table. The glows overpowered me, my bedroom, and my whole living place. The glow accompanied me all the time, all my hours and minutes, all my thoughts and moments.
Now I know the great Canadian authors named Ann-Marie MacDonald, Vincent Lam, Catherine Govier, Joseph Boyden, Timothy Findley, Margaret Laurence, Susanna Moodie, Thomas King, and Sara Jennette Duncan, just to name a few at random.
The fat volumes began to give a happy feeling. But I started worrying as well. How to go through novels comprising more than three to four to five hundred pages? How to go through the eight hundred-odd pages of ‘The Luminaries’ by Eleanor Catton? But I felt the impulse to touch the book, the Governor General’s Literary Award Winner of 2013. This novel by Catton, the Canada-born New Zealand author, also got the Man Booker Prize. How come I won’t read the books of this creative figure of only thirty, whose debut novel, ‘The Rehearsal’, came out only in 2008? How come I won’t read the historical novel ‘The Brothers Sisters’ by Patrick de Witt, the Vancouver writer? In the year when this magnum opus was published, he was awarded two national awards in Canada. This book brought him the Governor General’s Literary Award, Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and many more. And I should not be afraid to go through the three hundred-odd pages of this noted fiction writer! I knew I had to start. But how?
To make my way through CanLit, I began searching for which books on the history of Canadian literature were available in the Toronto Public Library. Immediately, I got ‘Canadian Literature in English: Texts and Contexts’ and William Herbert New’s book ‘A History of Canadian Literature .’I got some more like John Moss’ ‘A Reader’s Guide to the Canadian Novel’ and ‘Canadian Writers at Work.’ All those provided many more inputs to enrich me, extend my horizon, and help me move forward. By now, I have become more aware of the early Canadian literary pieces, the individual development of Canadian English and Canadian French literature, and the ages through which Canadian literature had run through the centuries.
But I felt that my attachment to the library books on the history of Canadian Literature would not impact me as much as it should have. I browsed those, underlined horrendously, and returned them to the library with all my observations. If that were so, then certainly reading them for my own study would not contribute when I would need them. And so, I began a new search.
One day, while researching the ‘used book shops in Toronto,’ I got one ‘Re: Reading.’ They do have many branches across the city. Google gave the address of the nearest one, which is not very far from my home.
It was a day that multiplied my happiness in Toronto a hundred times. As per my Google search, I reached there in 30 minutes. Not a very spacious shop it was. But there had been a huge number of tall shelves jam-packed mostly with books. Saying a ‘hello’ at the front desk, I confessed that I was a newcomer in the city and country also, and for the first time I was there in that shop, and I was trying to search for books on and of Canadian Literature. The lady took me with her, showed me the signs on the shelves, and at last brought me to a place where I found a sign like ‘Canadian Literature.’
‘Re: Read’ gave me many, among which a critique on Lucy Maud Montgomery touched me much. The unbelievably popular writer of Canada of the early twentieth century, by then, was not unfamiliar to me. Browsing on her life and works also added value to my reading. But the online study could not give me the strength to encapsulate a long article on her – a full view encompassing her writing career. But the new book would surely be a referential resource at my writing desk. I always believed literary criticism helps a reader to understand a text better, and books on literary criticism open many untrodden avenues for a reader. And all these possibilities shrouded my mind with many unseen possibilities.
This book made me happy, but this was not the book that made my day. Rather, I like to say, it actually made my year. It actually made a project idea in me – it boosted me to write a Bengali-
language book on Canadian Literature, the literature which is globally known as CanLit.
The book was voluminous, one of twelve-hundred pages. It was ‘The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature.’ I did not know such a book would ever be owned on CanLit. I did not know such an extensively informative book would always be my companion. And the truth is, I, a poor man in Toronto, could ‘afford’ such invaluable work in reality at only 12 dollars.
A new illumination began to encircle me around the clock. It did not let me sleep for the first few days. Entries like ‘Novels in English,’ ‘Novels in French,’ ‘Poetry in English,’ ‘Poetry in French,’ ‘Biography and Memoirs in English,’ ‘Children’s Literature in English,’ ‘Drama in English,’ and ‘Essays in English’ made me sleepless.
‘Novels in English’ is an essay of 38 pages, contributed by many. The long essay has many separate parts which are written by scholarly persons. The parts have been like: ‘Beginning to 1900’, ‘1900 to 1920’, ‘1920 to 1940’, ‘1940 to 1960’, ‘1960 to 1982’, ‘Other talents, other works: 1960 to 1982’, ‘1983 to 1996’, ‘Other novels: 1983 to 1996’. Now I can use a marker as much as I wish, underline the significant lines whenever I need, and write my notes around the pages and thus use my study as and when I need.
A copy of ‘The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature’ at my home has empowered me to work more precisely, more devotedly, and more meticulously. Now, similar books from the Toronto Public Library will pose contribute more to my research. Now Richard Lane’s ‘The Routledge Concise History of Canadian Literature,’ ‘Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives,’ ‘A Reader’s Guide to the Canadian Novel,’ ‘Novels and the Nation: essays in Canadian Literature,’ ‘French- Canadian & Quebecois Novels,’ ‘Measures of Astonishment: poets on poetry,’ ‘ECW’s biographical guide to Canadian poets’ became supportive of continuing my work.
Now I gradually got aware of how the literature in Canada started and, how the different provinces came up with their own literature and thus contributed to the bulk of Canadian Literature, how the French-language literature enriched the CanLit.
And consequently, in 2018, I felt empowered to write a Bengali- language manuscript on Canadian literature, and now I feel blessed that my Murdhonno, Dhaka, came forward to publish that one into a book in the following year.
— Subrata Kumar Das is an immigrant Bangladeshi writer now living in Toronto.
