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Fiction Cultural Heritage

The Foreigner

A Tale of Saskatchewan

by (author) Ralph Connor

afterword by Daniel Coleman

Publisher
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2014
Category
Cultural Heritage
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781554589463
    Publish Date
    Apr 2014
    List Price
    $17.99
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781554589449
    Publish Date
    Apr 2014
    List Price
    $26.99

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Description

The Foreigner (1909) tells the story of Kalman Kalmar, a young Ukrainian immigrant working in rural Saskatchewan. It addresses the themes of male maturation, cultural assimilation, and a form of “muscular Christianity” recurring in Connor’s popular Western tales. Daniel Coleman’s afterword considers the text’s departure from Connor’s established fiction formulas and provides a unique framework for understanding its depiction of difference.

About the authors

Charles W. Gordon (1860—1937) was educated at the University of Toronto and ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1890. Under the pseudonym Ralph Connor, he published over thirty novels that made him an internationally best-selling author, including The Man from Glengarry (1901) and Glengarry School Days (1902).

Ralph Connor's profile page

After finishing high school in Ethiopia, Daniel Coleman earned university degrees at the University of Regina and the University of Alberta. He now holds the Canada Research Chair in Critical Ethnicity and Race Study in the English department of McMaster University. Daniel Coleman is a leading researcher in the depiction of immigrant men in Canadian literature. He has won the John Charles Polanyi Prize for his study of how literary texts produce and reinforce categories of cultural identification such as gender, ethnicity and nationality. His critically acclaimed book, Masculine Migrations: Reading the Postcolonial Male in "New Canadian" Narratives, published in 1998 by University of Toronto Press, is considered the foundational Canadian work in the field. While being a bahir-zaff throughout his childhood brought Daniel Coleman the pain of never fully belonging, it also gave him the immeasurable benefits and insights of an intercultural life. Several of his essays on his missionary childhood have appeared in magazines and journals. "The Babies in the Colonial Washtub," included in a revised form in The Scent of the Eucalyptus, won a Silver Medal in the National Magazine Awards. 

Daniel Coleman's profile page