Most Métis life-histories and (semi-) autobiographies, exemplified by Maria Campbell’s seminal Halfbreed (1973), are organised around humorous anecdotes which are usually in stark contrast to the overall tragic context of the texts. The employment of the anecdote as a “minor,” extra-literary form by a “minor literature” (Deleuze/Guattari) is linked to the unofficial, to the unpublished, to local knowledge and to the constitution of a literary site where the Other is encountered. In Halfbreed, anecdotal digressions, often based on Métis folk sources, generally represent true “moments of being” in language. They function as a marker of difference and cultural identity, but also as a way to recover the open spaces within, necessary for cultural survival and future literary creation. Campbell’s text, interpreted by some critics as a social case history, a mere chronicle of Native oppression and suffering in Canada, subverts the stereotypical image of the stoic and taciturn Native. Anecdotal humour as a regenerative tool balances an otherwise tragic vision and provides hope for future opposition against oppression. It in the guise of the anecdote that the minor and the de-legitimised successfully intrudes into the major genres and thereby decolonises narrative.
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