by Jo-Ann Wallace
THISTLEDOWN PRESS
2024/$24.95/228 pp.
Jo-Ann Wallace’s A Life in Pieces does what a good memoir should do: it outlines how she started in one place—a child in a working-class Montreal neighbourhood, in a family that did not prize books or intellect—and ended up in another, as an esteemed professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. This evolution from one existence to another was hard won. Wallace found, in the works of writers such as Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir and Germaine Greer, “a world that had people like [her] at the centre: young women feeling something, wanting something, just about bursting with something.” She wanted that world.
In 30 short essays, Wallace explores a wide range of topics, from reflecting on childhood friendships, to working unfulfilling jobs, to marrying a second time, navigating a challenging career, collecting Melmac, and receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis.
In “Me and Not-Me,” Wallace juxtaposes the 2022 US Supreme Court ruling overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision with an account of her own illegal abortion at age 17, when Quebec only allowed the procedure if the mother’s life was in danger. Wallace praises “the young locum who briefly occupied my family doctor’s practice; the fierce young women of the Montreal Women’s Liberation Movement; and, most of all, Dr. Henry Morgentaler.” I’ve never seen the good doctor so boldly thanked.
I was a graduate student in the 1990s when Wallace chaired what was then simply called the English Department. Although I did not know her personally, I admired her commitment to feminist scholarship. When the Women’s Studies Program came under threat of cancellation, she worked tirelessly to save it.
After a 30-year career, Wallace retired in 2014 and, shortly thereafter, moved to Victoria. In 2020 a routine physical resulted in a Stage IV cancer diagnosis. Her essay “Cancer in the Time of COVID” reframes the idea of living with the disease. Nobody asked her to join a support group or do yoga, as they might have in pre-COVID days. “Is it better like this?” Wallace wonders, reflecting that her daily life is her bucket list. “Taking the dog for walks, tending the garden, reading and writing, cracking jokes and watching TV with [her] husband.” Leaving that happiness is made easier by Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) law. She writes, “I can’t imagine going through this without that consolation.”
Wallace died in June 2024. Over her lifetime, she inspired many people and contributed greatly to literary scholarship. That legacy continues with A Life in Pieces. Her final lecture, if you will, is both a roadmap to and a celebration of a life well lived. It is also a mature and moving meditation on mortality.
Theresa Shea’s third novel is forthcoming from ECW Press.
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