Slings and Arrows

In most cases, an immigrant chooses Canada more than Canada chooses the immigrant. Accordingly, the newcomer has the right to be critical of any national myth, not simply to lament or denigrate but to help make things better. Far too often, though, immigrants are expected to be grateful. They’re admonished, sometimes vehemently, for any criticism they make — political, cultural, and, perhaps especially, literary. I kept this in mind when reading two vastly different books by authors who chose this place.

Lydia Perović came here from Montenegro in 1999. She was escaping from wars in the Western Balkans, while also “searching for freedom: from family, ethnicity, nation, gender, poverty, an authoritarian political culture, an economy of the early accumulation of capital.” In Canada, she sought a liberal democracy, “only to learn that the project is never complete, and that one can never relax and return to private life, taking various freedoms for granted. That the...