South Asian Canadian Literature: A Centennial Journey Towards Settlement and Citizenship

South Asians have been settling in Canada for over a century, and now comprise Canada’s largest visible minority group. In the national imaginary, however, the South Asian presence is perceived as a strictly post-1960s phenomenon, when Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s Liberal government exercised a major policy shift in lifting racialized immigration bans prohibitive to non-European migrants.

This book presents the first sustained critical reading of South Asian Canadian literatures within the context of what is now more than a century of South Asian Canadian settlement, breaking new ground in its emphasis on the diverse, multigenerational histories of South Asian Canadians within Canada itself--that is, as part of the Canadian national narrative and as active participants in its expressions and contestations of citizenship and belonging. Theoretically grounded at the intersection between diaspora and citizenship studies, the book explains how the writer’s concerns of the ＂citizenship regime＂ have led to new forms for voicing South Asian Canadian experience, including the emergence of the historical novel to account for the multigenerational histories of Punjabi-Canadians settled in British Columbia since the early 1900s; to political fiction which responds to the plight of South Asian Canadian Muslims targeted by Islamophobia or anti-terror legislation; historiographic and revisionist excavations of court documents, trial proceedings and media coverage to address past or present injustices perceived to be misrepresented in official annals or public discourse; and activist impulses aimed at tackling a range of issues, such as domestic violence, racialized crime, or unfair employment practices, deemed detrimental to individual, communal and national solidarity and civic wellness.

A comprehensive introduction to a wide range of South Asian Canadian writers and work, this book serves as the first resource of its kind to specialists and non-specialists interested in the South Asian Canadian diaspora, and its peoples, histories and literatures, Asian, South Asian, Canadian and postcolonial literary studies.

Mariam Pirbhai is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada.