(Un-)becoming Canadian noirs: Marginalized masculinities in ‘Little Rooster’ (2019) and ‘Contact Sports’ (1996)

This article analyses how the short stories ‘Little Rooster’ from David Bezmozgis’ Immigrant City (2019) and ‘Contact Sports’ from Eden Robinson’s (Haisla/Heiltsuk) Traplines (1996) complicate patriotic narratives of Canadian masculinity as antipatriarchal. Firstly, ‘Little Rooster’ follows the third-generation immigrant David researching the double life that his Jewish grandfather Berl began in Latvia during the Second World War but continued in Toronto. Secondly, ‘Contact Sports’ charts the teenager Tom’s attempts to overcome his cousin Jeremy’s transgressions during the latter’s visit to Vancouver. I argue that by unsettling assumptions about men’s identities in fictionalized urban homes, Bezmozgis and Robinson expose how colonial patriarchy still underwrites what it means to be Canadian despite the popularization of agendas geared towards multiculturalism and gender equality. After highlighting how the stories implement aesthetic and thematic conventions of the noir, I conclude my close readings by contextualizing these representations of masculinity within the imaginary of the noir genre that prioritizes the survival of morally ambiguous settlers in the colonial wilderness over femininely coded empathy.