Irene Marques

When one gives preferential treatment to a certain language and literature, one is also putting forward a certain ethic and aesthetic (a way of life) that then affects the world globally. As noted by Hephzibah Anderson in “Why won’t English speakers read books in translation”, only about 2 to 3% of works written in other languages are translated into English, whereas given the predominance of the English language in the world, many works in English are translated into other languages. This imbalance in translation exacerbates the “monoculture” and we end up with a literature that favors what I term the Anglo-Saxon ethic and aesthetic which then enters the consciousness of the world making it the norm, entrenching the world’s corners and erasing or pushing aside what is written there (the stories and languages and worldviews).[i] We thus have a one-way type of transaction, an unbalanced act of assimilation, reminiscent of colonial times when Africans were taught in English (or other European languages) and had English (or French or Portuguese) works translated into African languages—to teach them the way, the civilized way, as it was called in those days—but not the other way around. Language and literature were powerful mechanisms to colonize the mind, to borrow from the well-known book Decolonizing the Mind: The Language of African Literature by Kenyan scholar and writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.

There is a parallel that I want to draw here with the situation in Canada. We are, as the ‘story’ always goes, a very culturally diverse country. In Toronto alone over 50% of the population was not born in Canada and thus speaks many other languages. Though these people may write in English, they possess in them an ethic and aesthetic that comes from their mother tongue and from being exposed to literatures in that language, and which they then (naturally) inject in their writing. We carry in us things from the past, those sacred stamps that cannot and should not be erased, forgotten or suppressed: things of the mind, things of the soul, things of the body. Now, if you allow me the self-serving liberty, I will use myself and Paulo da Costa as examples here: we are both bilingual writers writing in English and Portuguese. When we write in English, there is often a specific ethic and aesthetic that can be perceived in our work which comes from the Portuguese language and the type of literatures we were exposed to, which tend to value the lyric, the metaphoric, the philosophical, the emotional, the magic-realist, etc. This ethic and aesthetic is quite different from the Anglo-Saxon one which tends to value realism, minimalism, pragmatism, materialism and a certain type of rationalism. It is this latter ethic and aesthetic that dominates much of the Canadian literary scene as I see it. It seems increasingly to also dominate the global literary field as well, as already noted. It follows then that our writing (the writing of those who deviate from this ethic and aesthetic) is affected by this “monoculture” imposed by the literary elite—it is not as welcome as it should be in a culture that wants to thrive on diversity and constantly boasts about having concretized it.

I argue that in Canada people at the forefront of the literary industry, from agents, to major publishing houses, to literary and Jury panels responsible for awarding literary grants and prizes (such as Ontario Arts Council or Canada Council for the Arts and others) are people predominantly from the Anglo-Saxon ethnic pool, born and educated in Canada, in many cases quite young and who don’t have a lot of work published or any extensive knowledge of, or training in, international literatures. These are the people who largely decide what is published, who gets grants, reviews and accolades. This also leads to the existence of an “imagined literary audience”, in other words, the idea that people who read the most and buy the most books are from the Anglo-Saxon pool and so writing is catered to them. In a recent piece published in Open Book Toronto titled “12 Reasons Why Canlit’s Got Me So Tired” Jael Richardson points to the lack of people of colour in the Canadian literary scene and its overwhelming whiteness (‘white’ is also a colour of course!). I agree but contend that we are dealing here with a ‘certain type’ of whiteness, people who mostly espouse the Anglo-Saxon ethic and aesthetic, who read and write primarily—and therefore identify with, favor, promote, publish and praise—a literature that reflects that ethic and aesthetic. This then is what passes for Canadian mainstream literature—while most of what deviates from this ethic and aesthetic may be qualified as ethnic, immigrant or go by any other name. It is as if there are Canadian writers (apparently universal tellers of truth) and then minor Canadian writers or culturally diverse writers, the latter being defined by ethnicity as if any group could live (exist) outside ethnicity. These are simplistic, outdated and divisive categories that do not reflect the reality of Canada and constitute remnants of a colonial thinking and European enlightenment ideologies. For more on this subject, see also “Why literary critics failed to understand and define Austin Clarke, a Canadian writer far ahead of his time” by Paul Barret published in  the National Post.

I will venture another proposition here (which may have already been advanced by linguistics somewhere), and forgive me if I sound arrogant: I actually believe that writers who have access to two languages and are fully bilingual, can create more unique works of fiction in both languages for each language they know feeds the other, pushing it beyond its own limits, making it find novel ways of saying. And finding novel ways of saying should be the main goal of literary writing—not to mention that language (writing) is a “technology that restructures thought” to borrow from Walter Ong’s title, and one that adapts and changes with times to better capture reality. Language is a tool (albeit imperfect) for us to access the unknown, to expand our consciousness, to have a glimpse at a reality beyond us, and in that sense, it needs to be innovative and constantly rewrite (reinvent) itself. Precisely because language is an imperfect medium, a mere translation of a reality whose real nature and dimension escape us, we need to always manipulate it so that it can better tell that reality that we yearn to understand and connect with. I remember having this strong awareness (this sense of newness in my writing) when I wrote my first creative work in English and I still often feel it when I switch between writing in English and Portuguese, which I often do.

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