Embracing one's difference through selected Native CanLit for Children

Native Canadian fiction for children and young adults can be viewed as an important means of cultural transmission and socialisation that contributes, to a great extent, to a community's collective identity. Here begins the first problem posed to us: trying to define the concept of culture and to examine in what way(s) oral heritage forms a part of it. Then, some other questions arise because in Canada debates about national identity re-surface repeatedly and continue to haunt the collective imagiNation of the country.New voices are currently being authorised as Canadian, and difference has now turned into the distinctive feature of the national lit. Jeannette Armstrong, an Okanagan writer, artist and educator, is well aware of the strength that stems from this variety of cultures and she advocates for a plurality of voices within and outside of her community. Using Armstrong's fiction for children and young adults, and looking briefly at some works by other writers, this book examines how lit. can be read as a site of resistance and/or of cross-cultural exchange connecting diverse people of different nationalities, generations, languages, religions, genders & social condition.