The Newfoundland Diaspora: Mapping the Literature of Out-Migration by Jennifer Bowering Delisle (review)

As Jennifer Bowering Delisle argues, out-migration from Newfoundland is both a preoccupation for many of its writers and a condition under which some of their literary output is produced. Because leaving the province is such a universal phenomenon—indeed, the author observes that it is “often expected or considered inevitable” (3)—out-migration serves as more than simply a thematic concern. It forms the signature trope that, when combined with an expressed desire to return “home,” defines the shared experience central to Newfoundland literature and provides Delisle with the foundation from which she seeks to theorize diaspora in an Atlantic Canadian context. To this point, by her reckoning, the concept has been applied too loosely to the Newfoundland experience, and so the author connects diaspora purposefully to five features of out-migration. In large measure, Newfoundlanders “abroad” experience a painful separation, an unbroken connection to the island, and a sense of marginalization in their new homes. In response, they form communities of the like-minded and together regard Newfoundland in neo-national terms (10). While these commonalities are essential to her understanding of diaspora, Delisle seems most troubled by the application of this last feature. Is Newfoundland in its literature depicted as a region, a province, or a nation? Ultimately, the author seems to understand this figurative Newfoundland as a nation, one that transcends its nebulous status before confederation to strengthen its place within Canada and sharpen the features of its creative heritage.

Delisle uses the novels of Donna Morrissey to illustrate the toll of outmigration in human terms, revealing how personal choices that for many are thought to be pragmatic can be pieced together in a mosaic of fictional experience that is both wider and deeper than any individual story. The verse of Carl Leggo, on the other hand, demonstrates the persistence of nostalgia in diasporic literature, as the poet’s very personal observations evoke a series of images that may be read as central to any evolving definition of Newfoundland identity. Though the idea of Newfoundlanders as perpetual outsiders on the mainland sits uneasily with the concept of Canadian multiculturalism, the work of Helen Buss/Margaret Clarke allows Delisle to explore the ways in which identity remains grounded in a sense of place. By embracing multiple identities, Buss/Clarke may acknowledge many attachments in different locations; a similar preoccupation defines the work of David Macfarlane, who seeks literary spaces where his Newfoundland and Canadian heritages overlap. The poetry of E. J. Pratt is weighed on its authenticity as Delisle revisits the question of whether his verse is contrived romanticism or whether it ever reflects genuinely on outport life. While she is mindful of his skeptics, the author chooses to emphasize how Pratt embraces Newfoundland cultural traits while also identifying as Canadian, thereby transcending narrow political allegiances and traditional conceptions of nationhood. A more common strategy of resistance is the construction of an “imagined community” of Newfoundlanders in the drama of David French, whose declared identity resists assimilation in Toronto (111).

Many of Delisle’s concerns are brought to bear on her discussion of Wayne Johnston, a Newfoundland novelist who may be counted among the best contemporary Canadian writers. Against the criticism that his The Colony of Unrequited Dreams is inauthentic, the author moves beyond the familiar explanation that he reinvents his Newfoundland for dramatic purposes and argues instead the value of Johnston’s prose for shifting the representation of geography away from windswept outports to the island’s interior. By doing so, Johnston achieves a wholly different authenticity: one that embraces a complexity to belie the postcard images of the province’s tourism industry. Similarly, Delisle finds that Baltimore’s Mansion, Johnston’s somewhat beleaguered memoir, twists genre itself to consider both out-migration and confederation, questioning whether the perspective granted him by distance also introduces a contamination to his narrative.

It is clear that the author has chosen works to elucidate...