Road Work: Destabilizing National Myth in North American Narratives of Mobility

This dissertation examines the historical contexts of the American road narrative and the way that those contexts, as well as the genre more broadly, have been incorporated into Canadian road texts. Canadian road narratives often draw on the nation building that many American texts are invested in producing. Nation building, however, is not as central to those journeys undertaken by people of colour and Indigenous and Native American travellers. Accordingly, I will be making a conceptual distinction between the road narrative and what I call narratives of mobility. I make this distinction because often in these texts, Indigenous and Native American peoples as well as people of colour are forced to travel as a means of claiming space. Space, of course, conceptualized broadly and reaching beyond just the physical and inclusive of social and cultural as well. The claiming of space in these texts is also accompanied by a reckoning with constructions of nation and the traveller’s place within constructs of national identity. In examining these narratives, I will also be drawing on the emerging field of mobility studies to create a more nuanced discussion of the unique experience of movement in relation to the narrative myth of nation. Additionally, the narrative of mobility offers a fruitful genre through which to employ transnational study because it is tied to the process of nation-building, and yet the experiences presented within the texts often unsettle national narratives. I examine On the Road by Jack Kerouac and This is My Country Too by John A. Williams to situate the road narrative genre’s American influences. I then turn to Volkswagen Blues by Jacques Poulin to demonstrate the way that those American influences permeate borders and represent the cross-cultural exchange that is central to North American transnationalism. I also use The Motorcyclist by George Elliot Clarke and Days by Moonlight by André Alexis to further investigate the way that narratives of mobility are always engaged in the process of destabilizing national myth, particularly when the traveler is a person of colour. Finally, I examine Slash by Jeanette Armstrong, Green Grass Running Water by Thomas King, and Four Souls by Louise Erdrich which engage with questions of nation, sovereignty, and borders through mobility. I argue that these are narratives of mobility in which the traveller reflects on their identity and relationship to nation. As they move through the varied landscapes and encounter an array of people and experiences, they begin to disentangle and destabilize prescribed narratives about national history and identity.