12. Reading and Teaching Canadian Literature in Slovenia

The longer I am away from Canada, the more textual my relationship to my home country becomes. Reading about Canada, and teaching Canadian literature to my Slovene students, has changed what Canada means to me and I am now less confident about how in touch I am with Canada. This chapter examines how my medial position makes me aware of knowledge gaps about Canada and how it also makes me aware of cultural assumptions that are transferred from Central Europe and must be addressed in the classroom. At the same time, I am made aware of a relative parochialism in the Canadian literary scene. The final section of the chapter focusses on teaching Rohinton Mistry’s “Squatter” (1987) and David Bezmozgis’s “Immigrant City” (2019) in a place where “immigration” and “multiculturalism” are understood differently, often negatively. The longer I remain and teach in Slovenia, the more I realize the benefits of adopting an outsider’s view of my own country, and the more I appreciate my changing understanding of Canada.