Canon(fodder) Mark Two

So, I’m on a course. Does this make me Canlit? The course is “Postcolonial Literature in English” at the University of Tokyo. The theme for the course this winter is “displacement, exile and migration”, focusing on “alienation and affiliation; models of community and belonging; and the emergence of utopian aspirations to lyrical redemption” (I like the phrase lyrical redemption) and “ambiguity of racial categorisation in the formulation of a distinctive post-colonial sense of national identity”. This is, I have to say, extremely cool. The Wide Sargasso Sea, Out of Africa, Chinua Achebe’s African Trilogy, works by Doris Lessing, Michael Ondaatje, Rohinton Mistry, Daniel Defoe . . . and there’s Blackdog on the list. Look out, Anne of Green Gables! Canlit’s grown some teeth! (Y’know, Blackdog would make great anime …)