"Local to where, across the river?": Detroit, Borderlands, and Cycles of Dispossession in Elmore Leonard's Killshot.
This article considers American crime novelist Elmore Leonard's Killshot (1989) as an "urban western" on the Windsor/Detroit international border. Drawing on Gloria E. Anzaldúa's work on the borderlands, Greg Grandin's work on frontiers in the US imagination, and Holly Karibo's research on illicit e...
| Published in: | Canadian Review of American Studies Vol. 55; no. 3; pp. 198 - 215 |
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| Format: | Literary Criticism |
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University of Toronto Press
Dec2025
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=190911457&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 190911457 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00077720 CRA jtl: Canadian Review of American Studies issn: 00077720 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Dec2025 vid: 55 iid: 3 pid: 678 pub: University of Toronto Press artinfo: ui: 190911457 10.3138/cras-2025-010 ppf: 198 ppct: 17 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 698KB tig: atl: "Local to where, across the river?": Detroit, Borderlands, and Cycles of Dispossession in Elmore Leonard's Killshot. aug: au: Jansen, Brian affil: University of Maine, Orono, Maine, United States su: Borderlands in literature Killshot (Book) Canada-United States border Leonard, Elmore, 1925-2013 Indigenous ethnic identity Native American reservations American identity 20th century (Literary period) Detroit (Mich.) sug: subj: Detroit (Mich.) Borderlands in literature Killshot (Book) Canada-United States border Leonard, Elmore, 1925-2013 Indigenous ethnic identity Native American reservations American identity 20th century (Literary period) keyword: études des frontières border studies borderlands Détroit Detroit Elmore Leonard frontières indigénéité Indigeneity Killshot (1989) ab: This article considers American crime novelist Elmore Leonard's Killshot (1989) as an "urban western" on the Windsor/Detroit international border. Drawing on Gloria E. Anzaldúa's work on the borderlands, Greg Grandin's work on frontiers in the US imagination, and Holly Karibo's research on illicit exchange at the US/Canada borderline, the author theorizes Leonard's Detroit—once capital of the Michigan Territory, home to the Anishinaabe, settled variously by the French and British, today one of the largest majority-Black cities in the United States—as a kind of frontier and, in so doing, interrogates both the persistence and the problems of the border. While nominally reproducing the fantasies and violence of the West in its depiction of contemporary Detroit as a lawless outpost, the author argues the novel's spatial movements—from Toronto through Detroit, north to Marine City, Michigan, south to Cape Girardeau, Missouri—in fact undercut the same, tying together crucial strands of geography and history. By returning, repeatedly, to Bkejwanong, the First Nation Reserve on Walpole Island located in the St. Clair River, which divides Canada and the United States, the novel calls us to consider the persistent and ongoing shadow of dispossession in American (and indeed Canadian) identity. Dans le présent article, le livre Killshot (1989) de l'auteur de romans policiers américain Elmore Leonard, est perçu comme un « western urbain » à la frontière internationale de Windsor et de Détroit. Inspiré par les recherches de Gloria E. Anzaldúa sur les régions limitrophes, de Greg Grandin sur les frontières dans l'imaginaire américain et de Holly Karibo sur les échanges illicites aux frontières des États-Unis et du Canada, l'auteur théorise que le Détroit d'Elmore Leonard, qui a déjà été la capitale du Territoire du Michigan des Anishinaabes, où les Français et les Britanniques se sont installés à diverses époques et qui est aujourd'hui l'une des plus grosses villes à majorité noire des États-Unis, est une espèce de frontière qui conteste à la fois la persistance et les problèmes de la frontière. Bien que le roman reproduise symboliquement l'imaginaire et la violence de l'Ouest dans sa représentation du Détroit contemporain sous forme d'avant-poste anarchique, l'auteur allègue que les mouvements spatiaux de Toronto à Détroit, de Marine City, au Michigan, au nord, à Cape Girardeau, au Missouri, au sud, sapent plutôt ces mouvements et relient des fils cruciaux de la géographie et de l'histoire. En revenant encore et encore à Bkejwanong, la réserve des Premières Nations de l'île Walpole sur la rivière St. Clair qui divise le Canada et les États-Unis, le roman invite à évaluer l'ombre persistante et continue de la dépossession de l'identité américaine (et, bien sûr, canadienne). pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Literary Criticism src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Canadian Review of American Studies is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Canadian Review of American Studies holder: University of Toronto Press dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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