Evasive Manoeuvres : Canadian Women's Confessional Writing

Confession is everywhere in our culture. It drives banal social media posts, sensational reality television shows, revolutionary social justice movements, and popular fiction. It has also been central to feminist movements throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. But acts of self-disclosure carry significant risks for women and nonbinary writers, who may be disbelieved or retraumatized, dismissed as narcissistic or unliterary, or stereotyped in ways that constrain professional opportunities.

Naming this tension the “confessional impasse,” Myra Bloom explores how four contemporary Canadian writers navigate both the possibilities and the perils of confession. Focusing on the work of Tanya Tagaq, Nelly Arcan, Sheila Heti, and Sina Queyras, Bloom offers a dynamic exploration of confessional writing in poetry and autofiction, a hybrid form of life writing that blends autobiography with invention. She situates the forces increasingly shaping women’s lives – social media, digital culture, beauty culture, and the relentless pressure to optimize the body – within a broader ecosystem that demands self-display for public consumption. Using the confessional impasse as a theoretical framework, Bloom shows that although writers deploy evasive manoeuvres to avoid rendering themselves vulnerable, they are often misread through the very autobiographical discourses they are escaping.

As Canadian literature becomes increasingly confessional in its texts, institutions, and discourse, Evasive Manoeuvres provides an exciting in-depth study of an overlooked force driving literary innovation in Canada.