This landmark study explores the cultural and literary history of unemployment in Canada from the 1920s to the 1970s, which were crucial decades in the formation of our current conception of Canada as a nation. Writing Unemployment asks how writers with diverse political affiliations participated in and protested against the discursive framing of unemployment. It argues that Depression-era conceptions of unemployment shaped later twentieth-century understandings of both worklessness and citizenship.

By examining novels, short stories, poetry, manifestos, and agitprop, Jody Mason situates the literary history of the cultural left in a broader context, challenges the dominant literary-historical narrative of the pioneer settler, and contributes to new scholarship on Canada’s modern period. By bridging close textual readings with book and publishing history, economic and sociological analysis, and original archival research, Writing Unemployment offers new ideas on work by many of Canada’s most important writers.

Jody Mason is an assistant professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Carleton University.

Jody Mason's profile page

• Short-listed, Gabrielle Roy Prize awarded by Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures

‘Writing Unemployment is a fascinating blend of cultural materialism, literary studies, and labour history… The Theoretical and methodological breadth of Jody Mason’s argument is impressive… A rich powerful and useful book.’

Labour/Le Travail vol 74:2013

‘Jody Mason’s impressive new book deploys joblessness, along with the attendant political and cultural strategies developed to combat it.’

Canadian Literature Spring 2014

‘Highly recommended.’

Choice Magazine vol 51:03:2013