Jean Rivard - University of British Columbia

Books in Review
Benterrak). Hiiggan sees these and several
other authors working toward a "cartography
of difference [which] celebrates the
heterogeneous nature of post-colonial societies
whose acknowledgement of a multiplicity
of cultural codes, influences and
relations provides a means of out-manoeuvring
the predominantly dualistic patterns
of influence and response that characterize
a European colonial heritage." Huggan's
analysis is generally interesting and thoughtprovoking,
but at times it appears far-fetched
and superficial. The question remains, for
example, why of all possible texts to represent
the map topos in Canadian literature
about the Native experience Huggan chose
Rudy Wiebe's Playing Dead.
Focusing exclusively on texts of the 1970s
and 1980s written by authors with an
awareness of theoretical issues, it is no surprise
that Huggan finds contemporary literature
in English Canada, Quebec, and
Australia corroborating his own deconstructive
approach: "The multiplication of
spatial references in contemporary
Canadian and Australian writing has
resulted not only in an increased range of
regional and international locations, but
also in a series of'territorial disputes'
which pose a challenge to the self-acknowledging
'mainstreams' of metropolitan culture,
to the hegemonic tendencies of
patriarchal and ethnocentric discourses,
and to the homogeneity assumed and/or
imposed by colonialist rhetoric. ... The
map operates instead as a locus of 'productive
dissimilarity': productive in the sense
that the provisional connections of cartography
enact a process of perpetual transformation
which in turn stresses the
transitional nature of post-colonial discourse."
Huggan makes his points quite
well, but like any thematic study, Territorial
Disputes is in frequent danger of selecting
its material in such a way that it does not
always do justice to the entire text at hand.
The cursory nature of several analyses as
well as the relative brevity of the study (155
pages of text for a massive body of novels)
indicates that Huggan discusses a topic that
is still evolving as the Canadian and
Australian literatures are developing their
post-colonial identities.
Voices of South Asian
Women
Nurjehan Aziz, Editor
Her Mother's Ashes and Other Stories by South
Asian Women in Canada and the United States.
TSAR $15.95
Reviewed by Pamela McCallum
The stories collected in Her Mother's Ashes
bring together a varied group of writings by
South Asian women living in North
America. In her introduction Arun Prabha
Mukherjee cautions that "we must guard
against the homogenizing tendencies of
much Western scholarship which speaks of
'the third world woman' or 'the South Asian
woman' as though these terms denoted
actual, existing entities whose characteristics
could be quantified and differentiated."
While it would be misleading to generalize
about this very diverse collection of stories,
it is possible to say that each writer grapples
with relationships which cut across
national and cultural boundaries. What is
readily apparent is that the stories represent
women whose lives dramatize an uneasy
interaction among ethnic, generational,
national and religious affiliations. In various
and challenging ways the writers in Her
Mother's Ashes articulate overlapping cultural,
historical and personal allegiances
which are negotiated in the narratives, and
which shape the experiences of women
whose migrations take them across the
boundaries of several cultures.
Perhaps these cultural tensions are
nowhere so clearly represented than in the
stories which explore the problematic sta-
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