Southern Stories

As novelist Fenton Johnson notes in the introduction to this book, Blaise’ portrayal of a dirt-poor South haunted by history belongs to an American literary tradition that includes Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty. What needs to be added is that this Southern Gothic tradition has tendrils that reach all the way up to Canada. Aside from Blaise, there have been many reverse carpetbaggers, Southerners who have headed (or returned) north such as Leon Rooke, Douglas Fetherling and Elizabeth Spencer. Moreover, many prototypically Canadian writers such as Alice Munro learned their craft at the feet of Southern masters. Like the American South, Canada has been a poor, rural land suspicious of outsiders and technological progress for most of its history. It’s no accident that at the end of the American Civil War, confederate leaders such as Jefferson Davies ended up in Canada. Progressive and enlightened, Canadians might not like to think so, but there is a deep emotional affinity between Canada and the American South.