Badlands
Item
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Date Created
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1975
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Description
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Kroetsch’s fifth novel, Badlands, follows the protagonist, Anna Dawe, who tries to understand her absent father, William. As both a first-person and third-person narrator, Anna creates a story about her father using his cryptic field notes that detail his time as a paleontologist in the Alberta Badlands in 1916. This largely fictive account of William’s life helps Anna reconcile her identity with her family’s past. First published in 1975, the novel underwent five further editions in 1976, 1982, 1983, 1988, and 1991. Initial reviews of Badlands celebrated the novel’s comedic elements, while critics in the 1980s and 1990s underscored its postmodern dimensions. Current approaches highlight how the text describes colonized Canadian land. The text deals with historiographic themes, showing how individuals remember, but also reject, the past. Badlands challenges myths about masculinity and heroism, and it subverts nationalist colonial narratives by illustrating the division between settler mentalities and Indigenous land.
The Literary Road Trip / "Badlands"