Strangers at Home: Imperial Landscape and Contested Places in Literature about Nova Scotia

Literature by marginalized communities in Nova Scotia—Gaélique, Black, Acadian, and Mi’kmaw authors—challenges the province's romanticized 'Maritime Paradise' narrative by reclaiming contested landscapes through creative works. This study reveals how five authors (Alistair MacLeod, Sylvia D. Hamilton, George Elliott Clarke, Serge Patrice Thibodeau, shalan joudry) subvert imperial erasure of displacement and violence, forging unique cultural connections to place. Using theories of landscape from Doreen Massey, Tim Cresswell, and W. J. T. Mitchell, the analysis demonstrates that their works resist assimilation while centering Indigenous and diasporic perspectives in Nova Scotia's contested history.

Drouin, Violette. (2024). Strangers at Home: Imperial Landscape and Contested Places in Literature about Nova Scotia [McGill University]. https://doi.org/10.82308/30825