Out-migration, driven by high unemployment and a floundering economy, has been a defining aspect of Newfoundland society for well over a century, and it reached new heights with the cod moratorium in 1992. This Newfoundland “diaspora” has had a profound impact on the province’s literature.
Many writers and scholars have referred to Newfoundland out-migration as a diaspora, but few have examined the theoretical implications of applying this contested term to a predominantly inter-provincial movement of mainly white, economically motivated migrants. The Newfoundland Diaspora argues that “diaspora” helpfully references the painful displacement of a group whose members continue to identify with each other and with the “homeland.” It examines important literary works of the Newfoundland diaspora, including the poetry of E.J. Pratt, the drama of David French, the fiction of Donna Morrissey and Wayne Johnston, and the memoirs of David Macfarlane. These works are the sites of a broad inquiry into the theoretical flashpoints of affect, diasporic authenticity, nationalism, race, and ethnicity.
The literature of the Newfoundland diaspora both contributes to and responds to critical movements in Canadian literature and culture, querying the place of regional, national, and ethnic affiliations in a literature drawn along the borders of the nation-state. This diaspora plays a part in defining Canada even as it looks beyond the borders of Canada as a literary community.

Jennifer Bowering Delisle (she/her) is the author of the lyric family memoir The Bosun Chair (NeWest 2017). She is a settler living in Edmonton/ Amiskwacîwâskahican/ Treaty 6 territory.

Jennifer Bowering Delisle’s lyric family memoir The Bosun Chair was published with NeWest press in 2017. She has a PhD in English, and is also the author of The Newfoundland Diaspora: Mapping the Literature of Outmigration. She joined the board of NeWest in 2018, and regularly teaches creative writing at the University of Alberta Faculty of Extension. She is a settler living in Edmonton/ Amiskwacîwâskahican/ Treaty 6 territory with her husband and two young children.

Jennifer Bowering Delisle's profile page

Jennifer Bowering Delisle’s The Newfoundland Diaspora prompts us to revise not just our conceptions of Newfoundland identity but also our understanding of the very idea of diaspora. This is a significant meditation on the shifting nature of regionalism and national identity in the age of globalization, an era of increasing migration, mobility, and deracination. At a time in which the continuous inhabitation of the same place is becoming less and less common, we need more complex and nuanced descriptions of the relationship between place, cultural identity, and collective identification, and that is what The Newfoundland Diaspora delivers.

Herb Wyile, author of <i>Anne of Tim Hortons: Globalization and the Reshaping of Atlantic-Canadian Literature</i> (WLU Press, 2011)

“Canada is what social critic Avtar Brah would call a ‘diaspora space’—a region filled with transnational groups—and Delisle’s book, with an excellent biography, is a brilliant precedent for studying other diasporic communities. Summing up: Highly recommended.

B. Almon, University of Alberta, CHOICE