Gender, identity, mental health, and everything the old CanLit canon politely ignored.
By ABS, who believes the future of literature belongs to those who never asked permission to speak.
Let’s be honest. Canadian literature used to be like a well-behaved dinner guest—clean shoes, decent opinions, and a tendency to whisper. But lately, it’s been showing up with a shaved head, a neon jacket, and a refusal to pass the butter without discussing systemic oppression.
This is post-maple CanLit—fierce, unapologetic, and gloriously loud about all the things previous generations barely dared to footnote.
Gone are the days when Canadian characters suffered in silence or walked into the woods to find themselves. Now, they tweet, scream, laugh, ghost their therapists, and write trauma into performance art. Literature has become the after-party of everything this country tried to repress—and the writing has never been better.
Joshua Whitehead: Queerness, Indigeneity, and Digital Drag
Let’s start with Joshua Whitehead, whose Jonny Appleseed (2018) took CanLit by its politely ironed lapels and smeared it with glitter and grief.
Jonny is a Two-Spirit, Indigiqueer cyber-sex worker navigating love, loss, family, and Facebook trauma. The novel is fast, raw, lyrical, and gorgeously resistant to genre. It’s the kind of book that makes old-school reviewers nervous—and readers feel seen.
Whitehead isn’t writing for the canon—he’s writing through it, past it, and reclaiming every word it once denied his ancestors.
Billy-Ray Belcourt: Poetry That Hurts and Heals in One Line
Belcourt writes poetry like it’s an act of soft rebellion. His debut, This Wound is a World (2017), tore through award lists with its queer Indigenous voice, its emotional intensity, and its refusal to let grief be tidy.
He followed it with essays (A History of My Brief Body) and a novel (A Minor Chorus)—all of which bend language like a crowbar. Belcourt’s words feel both whispered and screamed, as if he’s constantly switching between prayer and protest.
His voice reminds CanLit that to feel deeply is not a flaw, but a weapon.
Casey Plett: Trans Stories with Prairie Wind and Wine Stains
With A Safe Girl to Love and Little Fish, Casey Plett gave Canada something rare: trans characters who were complex, contradictory, and painfully real—not metaphors, not victims, just people.
Plett’s characters live in crummy apartments, drink too much boxed wine, date badly, and long for grace. Her writing is precise, vulnerable, and casually revolutionary. She brings a whole new kind of Canadian experience to the page—one not built on “survival” in the woods, but survival in a society obsessed with pretending it’s already inclusive.
Téa Mutonji, Vivek Shraya, Kai Cheng Thom, and the Literary Revolution You Almost Missed
CanLit 5 is the scroll of those who broke the form and made it better. These writers aren’t merely “diverse voices”—they are the center of gravity now.
Téa Mutonji’s Shut Up You’re Pretty explodes girlhood, migration, and sexual power with stories that sting.
Vivek Shraya is a multimedia force—author, musician, academic, and visible thunderbolt (I’m Afraid of Men is a manifesto dressed as memoir).
Kai Cheng Thom, poet and therapist, merges justice with joy, writing as if healing is both a scream and a spell (Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars reads like a fairy tale written in eyeliner and blood).
These are the writers who dismantle literary elitism one paragraph at a time—and look fabulous doing it.
Mental Health, Gender, and Queer Joy: Not Just Buzzwords
Post-maple CanLit doesn’t reduce identity to pain—it elevates complexity. These writers talk about trauma, yes—but also pleasure, awkwardness, awkward pleasure, chosen families, rage, and rest.
They write:
Mental illness without the violins
Gender without the binaries
Sexuality without apology
Language that slips between tongues and invents its own
They write without asking to be included—because they’re already here, building the table and throwing out the old menus.
The Canon Just Got Rewritten (And Thank God)
What does it mean to be Canadian in literature now?
It means your name might not fit neatly in the font.
It means your story might not pass a university syllabus.
It means you’re not waiting for approval. You’re already published—and the writing is on the wall. In neon. In multiple languages.
This isn’t the polite, flannel-draped literature of yesteryear. This is CanLit with eyeliner, rage, rhythm, and reason.
And it’s just getting started.
ABS closes the scroll with a flourish, letting the pages fall like protest signs after a march. Somewhere, a bookshelf groans—and rearranges itself.
Signed,
ABS, The Literary Scholar
Who believes that literature should never whisper what it can roar in sequins.
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