Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies

Abstract

Audience has overwhelmingly, and in rather uniform ways, embraced Ann-Marie MacDonald’s two novels, Fall on Your Knees and The Way the Crow Flies.  MacDonald, herself, however, has been less unvarying in her stated ambitions for her writing.  At times, it seems she wants readers to appreciate her narratives for being sexually-political; at others she draws attention to their universality.  The position of MacDonald’s novels within and without of queer culture—recognizing that queer culture is, in itself, a limiting construct built of tenuous foregrounded and backgrounded objects—depends largely on the interpretation of the nature of the contact between writer, reader, and material.  It is not enough to argue that MacDonald’s novels are queer.  It is equally problematic to disappear the orientation of the objects in her novels.  Ultimately and ironically, MacDonald encourages a progressive dialogue or tone as she challenges, indeed violates, the heteronormative, foregrounded material.