Queerly Canadian: An Introductory Reader in Sexuality Studies ed. by Maureen FitzGerald and Scott Rayter (review)

This is a reader whose significance is easily matched by its expansive scope, inclusivity, diversity, and investigation. The editors’ project is no less than to illustrate how sexuality “has played a fundamental role not only in the building of our nation, but in the creation of national narratives, myths, and indeed anxieties about Canadian identity.” The editors clearly have considered and understand cross-sections of Canadian society in ways that underscore how ostensibly discrete societal elements crosspollinate and intersect. In all ways, then, the Reader is wildly successful, valuable, and urgent.

Although the Reader is (of necessity) presented in ten sections – ranging from organizing and resistance to sports and youth culture, among many others – the essays in each part do not exactly stand alone nor are meant to be solely representative of a given field. Rather, a topical essay can often be comfortably read in conjunction with others. For example, Samantha King’s discussion of AIDS, figure skating, and national identity (in part 8, “Sports”) might have been easily placed in part 4, on health, or part 10, on visual cultures. It is the fluidity of assessment here, so remarkable in itself, that is the very hallmark of the thinking behind the Reader. The editors move beyond organizational necessity to assert that Canadian identities are fractured and incomplete but in ways that are productive, creative, given to change, and often unpredictable.

The editors have drawn on important earlier writings, such as Becki Ross’s and Brian Pronger’s, from the early 1990s, to take into account more recent concerns about evolving issues, such as Barry Adam’s take on barebacking, and Kerry Swanson’s article on Kent Monkman and First Nations hybridity. In locating sexuality and gender (and their variants and shadings) within the variety of performances constituting Canadian identities, the reader recalls Peter Dickinson’s groundbreaking Here Is Queer: Nationalisms, Sexualities, and the Literatures of Canada. It’s somewhat surprising, then, that the Reader does not include short fiction that can (as only fiction can) address many of the issues presented here. (And in that, Dickinson’s book would make a fine companion to the Reader.) But that is a quibble in a solid compendium that not only bespeaks the plurality of Canadian societies but also reveals the richness of the many ways we can be.