Refuse: CanLit in Ruins ed. by Hannah McGregor, Julie Rak, and Erin Wunker (review)

Refuse: CanLit in Ruins paints a searingly honest portrait of the Canadian literary scene from the perspective of talented authors who have too long lingered on its margins. The rifts and divisions, as Kristen Darch and Fazella Jiwa remind us, were "already there" but thrown into harsher relief by recent scandals like UBCAccountable, which the first section of the book probes unflinchingly in a series of poems and essays that are defiant in their anger and commitment to "critical care." Even for those of us working in other fields, there is much to learn from the myriad refusals that unify this collection – from the rejection of celebrity and prize culture to the pointed critique of the way in which the industry profits from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission "by turning it into a publishing trend" and commodifying diversity. The editors of this volume, Hannah McGregor, Julie Rak, and Erin Wunker, carefully frame the stakes of the debate while curating three distinct sections built around different plays on the titular noun "refuse." Their work both enacts a feminist activism and acknowledges the difficulties inherent in "archiv[ing] a cultural moment" that is as complex and controversial as that which erupted in 2016.

Although a work of mourning that rehabilitates "complaint," CanLit in Ruins also issues a call to action, expressing a gritty determination that finds its apex in Alicia Elliott's frank statement: "Eventually we have to grab some fucking fire extinguishers and put that [dumpster] fire out." Hence, Dorothy Ellen Palmer's call to "forge new tools," and Nikki Reimer and Natalee Caple's musings on rhizomatic strategies that privilege horizontal affiliation over hierarchy. Indeed, the thoughtful conversations that appear in the work's last two sections underscore the strong ties that bind an alternative community of writers whose varied and often divergent views nonetheless share a keen sense of positioning, privilege, and responsibility.

There is a creative energy that flows through this volume, from candid conversations linking the industry's "free and unvalued labour," to the problem of precarity in academia, to the emphatic poetic refusal of Kai Cheng Thom "to care at all" as someone whom the structure has never accommodated anyway. If, as the collection's editors declare, "at the heart of CanLit as a formation is colonial violence," re-imagining this cultural institution and reformulating it as a refusal of its underlying structures and power relations might ensure that reconciliation could be more than the "weird ass" settler project that Chelsea Vowel rightfully questions in her own poetic meditation. For this is also a tentatively hopeful book that issues a call to rebuild around an ethos of inclusivity and mutual respect that makes space for the marginalized and minoritized and imagines a pathway for radical transformation. As Kai Cheng Thom cuttingly accedes, "i am a believer in refuse / in garbage, in trash / i want to celebrate that which has been thrown away." Refusal, as the editors assert, "is power in all its generative possibility" that allows in the work's final section for scholars like Laura Moss to reaffirm their continued allegiance to the field as an ally, for Phoebe Wang to imagine accountable mentorship that learns from the lessons of #MeToo, for A.H. Rheume to articulate an activism modelled on the example of Antigone, and for Jennifer Andrews to commit to diversification within the academy. Joshua Whitehead gets the final word in the collection: "Maybe I'll come back to you, CanLit, if you can tell me who you're accountable to, but until then, I ain't got time to heal you too – I have Turtle Island to look forward to," while Alicia Elliott's question, "are you ready? We've got a lot of work to do," challenges us to begin anew the important work of decolonization that has never appeared more urgent.