Writing the Everyday: Women's Textual Communities in Atlantic Canada. Danielle Fuller. Montreal &amp; Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004; xi + 298 pages; ISBN 0-7735-2806-7; $75.00 (cloth).
This is a significant contribution to Atlantic

116

Atlantis 31.1, 2006 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis

literature studies. Using "feminist response theory," Fuller confronts the problem of the marginalization of Atlantic women writers within the wider Canadian dominant culture. She emphasizes the importance of "textual community," which includes writers' groups and provincial associations (such as the Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador) as well as local publishers and granting agencies. The writers who formed the Newfoundland Writers' Guild in 1968 started out of a rebellion against the remote Canadian Authors' Association, of whom they were a "branch" but found they got nothing for their membership fees (91-92). The Guild was "a turning point for all of us it was crucial in our development," poet Geraldine Rubia states (95). No longer marginalized by a distant organization in mainland Canada, Guild members found "the support and encouragement" they needed from each other, in the monthly workshops they organized (Fuller 95). Helen Porter, as well as Bernice Morgan and Rubia, continue to be staunch supporters of the Guild, and to mentor emerging local writers.
Fuller focuses on three fiction writers (Joan Clark, Bernice Morgan and Helen Porter) and three poets (Rita Joe, Maxine Tynes and Sheree Fitch). She does not examine the full range of the fiction writers' work, but narrows her discussion to one book each and in the case of Helen Porter, to only one short story. Still, what she has to say is fresh and interesting.
She chooses three performance poets who are largely ignored and disdained by academic critics. All come from disempowered groups within the dominant culture: aboriginal, the Miqmaq poet Rita Joe; black or "Afrocadian" Maxine Tynes; and working class Sheree Fitch. Tynes is disabled as well as black. Fuller makes an interesting distinction between the "formal" poetry reading and "outloud" poetry. The latter depends on a vital dynamic between poet and audience, which may well contain members of the oppressed group. The language is "demotic," simple and direct, confronting painful experiences such as racism, the difficulties of the disabled, or spousal and sexual abuse; and it appeals to the heart and emotions rather than the intellect. The listeners must empathize with those who are suffering; the poet must bear witness to their plight and become an agent of raising consciousness and thus bringing about social change. The audience can no longer plead ignorance of the terrible effects of racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination.

Despite the fact that the books of these three women poets are bestsellers, they are either ignored by academic critics or criticized for their use of clichéd and simplistic diction. (For example, Afrocadian George Elliott Clarke condemns Maxine Tynes for using clichés in her poem "Racism...to Raise the Heart Against.") Fuller defends her poets' use of the "demotic." Their poems must connect, and they must connect with the disadvantaged and poor and, by naming their oppression, empower them. Their political poetics are inimical to the intellectual, cerebral "poetic discourse" of elite High Culture.
The book suffers from some repetitiveness: Fuller summarizes what she is going to do at the beginning of each chapter, and what she has done at the end. Her pompous tone is irritating: "I have situated...I turn once again to...". These passages could well be deleted, and more space given to a wider discussion of the work of her fiction writers. For example, she should have included Helen Porter's pathbreaking novel of St John's working-class life, January, February, June or July, rather than merely discussing just one short story by her.
Roberta Buchanan Professor Emerita Memorial University of Newfoundland