Drawing on critical and theoretical material by thinkers as diverse as Jacques Derrida, Frantz Fanon, Mahatma Ghandi, and Julia Kristeva, Julie McGonegal supplements indigenous models and approaches with those produced within Euro American discourse. In the process, she develops an understanding of forgiveness and reconciliation based on the interventive power of literature. Through insightful readings of four novels, McGonegal demonstrates the ways in which literature can create the conditions that make processes of postcolonial reconciliation possible.

Julie McGonegal is a writer and editor who delights in language that dwells in the intersection of spirituality and social justice. She has a Ph.D. in English literature from McMaster University and has taught immigrant and Indigenous literature at various Ontario universities. Julie is the author of Imagining Justice: The Politics of Postcolonial Forgiveness and Reconciliation(McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009), and co-editor of Literature for Our Times (Rodopi, 2012). She lives with her partner of 25 years and her three children in Barrie, Ontario, on the traditional territory of Haudenosaunee and Anishnaabeg peoples.

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