Celebrating Black Canadian Creators

Botanist Alfred Homer, ever hopeful and constantly surprised, is invited on a road trip through Southwestern Ontario by his parents' friend, Professor Morgan Bruno, who wants company as he tries to unearth the story of the mysterious poet John Skennen. But this is no ordinary road trip. As Alfred and the Professor encounter towns with familiar names but where Black residents speak only in sign language or where there are Indigenous Parades, house burnings, werewolves, and witches, we realize that this is a journey through the psyche of Alfred and, indeed, though the psyche of Canada...

A bet between the gods Hermes and Apollo leads them to grant human consciousness and language to a group of dogs overnighting at a Toronto veterinary clinic. Suddenly capable of more complex thought, the pack is torn between those who resist the new ways of thinking, preferring the old 'dog' ways, and those who embrace the change. The gods watch from above as the dogs venture into their newly unfamiliar world, as they become divided among themselves, as each struggles with new thoughts and feelings.

Tancred Palmieri, a thief with elegant and erudite tastes, meets Willow Azarian, an aging heroin addict. She reveals to Tancred that her very wealthy father has recently passed away, leaving each of his five children a mysterious object that provides one clue to the whereabouts of a large inheritance. Willow enlists Tancred to steal these objects from her siblings and solve the puzzle. As Tancred tracks down the treasure, he must enlist the help of Alexander von Wurfel, esteemed copyist, and fend off Willow's heroin dealers, a young albino and his sidekick, a club-footed psychopath, both of whom are eager to get their paws on this supposed pot of gold. And he must mislead Detective Daniel Mandelshtam, his most adored friend.

Explores questions of masculinity, family, race, and identity as they are played out in a Scarborough housing complex during the sweltering heat and simmering violence of the summer of 1991.

Proud Empires explores colonial and post-colonial conditions in the British Empire and the politics of Barbados.

From the writings of James Douglas, a figure whose "Blackness" can only be construed from rumour and speculation, through to the contemporary hip hop lyrics of Rascalz, and including the work of poets, journalists, letter writers, biographers, fiction writers, and speech givers, Bluesprint is a comprehensive anthology of literature and orature by Black British Columbians. Bluesprint includes the work of such individuals as Rebecca Gibbs, Nora Hendrix (grandmother to Jimi), Austin Phillips, Rosemary Brown, Yvonne Brown, Hope Anderson, Lorena Gale, Mercedes Baines, David Nandi Odhiambo, Michelle La Flamme, Shane Book, Peter Hudson, Rascalz, and many others dealing with issues surrounding race, community, gender, and genre.

Paris, 1940. A brilliant jazz musician, Hiero, is arrested by the Nazis and never heard from again. He is twenty years old. He is a German citizen. And he is black. Fifty years later, his friend and fellow musician, Sid, must relive that unforgettable time, revealing the friendships, love affairs, and treacheries that sealed Hiero's fate.

Eleven-year-old George Washington Black--or Wash--a field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is initially terrified when he is chosen as the manservant of his master's brother. To his surprise, however, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky, where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and meaning, and where two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to see each other as human. But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash's head, they must abandon everything and flee together.

This anthology offers a cross-section of established writers and newcomers to the literary world who tackle contemporary and pressing issues. Included are memoirs, interviews, questionaires and other non-fiction pieces,

Abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea.. Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. Years later, she forges her way to freedom, serving the British in the Revolutionary War and registering her name in the historic “Book of Negroes.” This book, an actual document, provides a... revealing record of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the US for resettlement in Nova Scotia, only to find that the haven they sought was steeped in an oppression all of its own. Her eventual return to Sierra Leone is an... important chapter in history that saw 1,200 former slaves embark on a harrowing back-to-Africa odyssey.

Keita Ali is on the run. He is desperate to flee Zantoroland, a mountainous black island that produces the fastest marathoners in the world. Keita signs on with notorious marathon agent, Anton Hamm, who provides Keita with a chance to run the Boston marathon. But when Keita fails to place among the top finishers, rather than being sent back to his own country, he goes into hiding. A thriller that addresses the fate of undocumented refugees who struggle to survive in nations that do not want them.

Set in East Africa, the Middle East, Canada, and the U.S., this book explores the scars of violence and the weight of love and guilt on the soul. In these short stories, women, men, and children who've crossed continents in search of a better life find themselves struggling with the chaos of displacement and the religious and cultural clashes they face in their new homes.

Unicorns, Ethiopian food, a Wonder Woman drag queen: Monoceros offers a funny, heartbreaking look at the tragedy of teen suicide.

A high-wire collection of darkly humorous stories about a young woman floating in and out of her skin, trying on identities imposed on her by others.

When Norris, a Black French Canadian, starts his junior year at an Austin, Texas, high school, he views his fellow students as cliché from "a bad 90s teen movie."

Kara Davis is a girl caught in the middle--of her Canadian nationality and her desire to be a "true" Jamaican, of her mother and grandmother's rages and life lessons, of having to avoid being thought of as too "faas" or too "quiet" or too "bold" or too "soft." Set in "Little Jamaica," Toronto's Eglinton West neighbourhood, Kara moves from girlhood to the threshold of adulthood... This book shows how, in one charged moment, friendship and love can turn to enmity and hate, well-meaning protection can become control, and teasing play can turn to something much darker. The author depicts the tensions between mothers and daughters, second-generation Canadians and first-generation cultural expectations, and Black identity and predominately white society.

"A rhapsodic blues tragedy. Harlem Duet could be the prelude to Shakepeare's Othello, and recounts the tale of Othello and his first wife Billie (yes, before Desdemona). Set in contemporary Harlem at the corner of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X boulevards, the play explores the space where race and sex intersect. Harlem Duet is Billie's story." - Back Cover

"The first collection of monologues by African Canadian playwrights ever assembled. It is a response to the growing number of Black actors and theatre professionals who need access to a larger selection of audition pieces that reflect their own experience in all its diversity. Moreover, it may be one of the first contacts with Black playwrights that a young reader, interested in theatre, will have the opportunity to experience." -From the foreward by Djanet Sears

Winner of the Governor General's Literary Awards for Young People's Literature A heart-wrenching middle grade debut about Kemi, an aspiring scientist who loves statistics and facts, as she navigates grief and loss at a moment when life as she knows it changes forever. Eleven-year-old Kemi Carter loves scientific facts, specifically probability. It's how she understands the world and her place in it. Kemi knows her odds of being born were 1 in 5.5 trillion and that the odds of her having the best family ever were even lower. Yet somehow, Kemi lucked out. But everything Kemi thought she knew changes when she sees an asteroid hover in the sky, casting a purple haze over her world. Amplus-68 has an 84.7% chance of colliding with earth in four days, and with that collision, Kemi's life as she knows it will end. But over the course of the four days, even facts don't feel true to Kemi anymore. The new town she moved to that was supposed to be "better for her family" isn't very welcoming. And Amplus-68 is taking over her life, but others are still going to school and eating at their favorite diner like nothing has changed. Is Kemi the only one who feels like the world is ending?

When a mudslide strands a train, Baxter, a queer Black sleeping car porter, must contend with the perils of white passengers, ghosts, and his secret love affair The Sleeping Car Porter brings to life an important part of Black history in North America, from the perspective of a queer man living in a culture that renders him invisible in two ways. Affecting, imaginative, and visceral enough that you'll feel the rocking of the train, The Sleeping Car Porter is a stunning accomplishment. Baxter's name isn't George. But it's 1929, and Baxter is lucky enough, as a Black man, to have a job as a sleeping car porter on a train that crisscrosses the country. So when the passengers call him George, he has to just smile and nod and act invisible. What he really wants is to go to dentistry school, but he'll have to save up a lot of nickel and dime tips to get there, so he puts up with "George." On this particular trip out west, the passengers are more unruly than usual, especially when the train is stalled for two extra days; their secrets start to leak out and blur with the sleep-deprivation hallucinations Baxter is having. When he finds a naughty postcard of two queer men, Baxter's memories and longings are reawakened; keeping it puts his job in peril, but he can't part with the postcard or his thoughts of Edwin Drew, Porter Instructor.

A riveting exploration of the complexity within mother-daughter relationships and the dynamic vitality of Vancouver's former Hogan's Alley neighbourhood. 1930s, Hogan's Alley--a thriving Black and immigrant community located in Vancouver's East End. Junie is a creative, observant child who moves to the alley with her mother, Maddie: a jazz singer with a growing alcohol dependency. Junie quickly makes meaningful relationships with two mentors and a girl her own age, Estelle, whose resilient and entrepreneurial mother is grappling with white scrutiny and the fact that she never really wanted a child. As Junie finds adulthood, exploring her artistic talents and burgeoning sexuality, her mother sinks further into the bottle while the thriving neighbourhood--once gushing with potential--begins to change. As her world opens, Junie intuits the opposite for the community she loves. Told through the fascinating lens of a bright woman in an oft-disquieting world, this book is intimate and urgent--not just an unflinching look at the destruction of a vibrant community, but a celebration of the Black lives within.

Kidnapped by his father on the eve of Somalia's societal implosion, Mohamed Ali was taken first to the Netherlands by his stepmother, and then later on to Canada. Unmoored from his birth family and caught between twin alienating forces of Somali tradition and Western culture, Mohamed must forge his own queer coming of age. What follows in this fierce and unrelenting account is a story of one young man's nascent sexuality fused with the violence wrought by displacement.

Dr. Yvonne Bobb-Smith explores the knowledge and history of resistance of Caribbean women in Canada, using her own journey as a personal place from which to navigate the generalized experience of settlement and adjustment in the Diaspora. I know who I am investigates the stories of forty-five Caribbean women of different backgrounds and heritages. Bobb-Smith uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine subjectivity, experience, agency, and resistance in the lived experiences of Caribbean women in Canada. She demonstrates that the historical past left a legacy of domination and resistance.

Brand [covers] issues of sex and sexism: male violence toward women; how Black women learn the erotic; the vulnerability of Black female life in the city; and the stereotypes of Black females in popular culture. She looks at the denial of racism by the white liberal cultural elite, the centrality of 'whiteness' in definitions of North American culture... and white appropriation and representations of Black culture. The history and experience of Toronto's Black community are illuminated in essays charting the differing issues and politics confronting white and Black immigrant groups, the growth of the Black consciousness movement, and the coming of age and the inner lives of a new generation of Blacks in the city.

"Dionne Brand explores the relevance and nature of identity and belonging in a culturally diverse and changing world. Drawing on cartography, narratives of childhood in the Caribbean, journeys across the Canadian landscape, African ancestry, histories, politics, philosophies and literature, [this book] sketches the shifting borders of home and nation, and the connection to place in Canada and the world beyond" - back cover.

The unforgettable memoir of Austin Clarke. Clarke is a distinguished and celebrated novelist and short-story writer. His works often centre around the immigrant experience, of which he writes with humour and compassion, happiness and sorrow. In 'Membering, Clarke shares his own experiences growing up in Barbados and moving to Toronto to attend university in 1955 before becoming a journalist. With vivid realism he describes Harlem of the '60s, meeting and interviewing Malcolm X and writers Chinua Achebe and LeRoi Jones. Clarke went on to become a pioneering instructor of Afro-American Literature at Yale University and inspired a new generation of Afro-American writers.

Writer, historian and poet Afua Cooper tells the astonishing story of Marie-Joseph Angélique, a slave woman convicted of starting a fire that destroyed a large part of Montréal in April 1734 and condemned to die a brutal death. In a powerful retelling of Angélique’s story -- now supported by archival illustrations -- Cooper builds on 15 years of research to shed new light on a rebellious Portuguese-born black woman who refused to accept her indentured servitude. At the same time, Cooper completely demolishes the myth of a benign, slave-free Canada, revealing a damning 200-year-old record of legally and culturally endorsed slavery.

How do we stop racist ideas and violence if the very foundation of our society is built upon white supremacy? How do we end systemic racism if the majority do not experience it or question its existence? This book is the author's high school journal, in which she documents, processes, and resists the systemic racism, micro-aggressions, stereotypes, and outright racism she experienced in Canada's education system. Powerful and eye-opening, she illustrates how our schools reinforce rather than erode racism. She shows how systemic racism works, how it alienates and seeks to destroys a child's sense of self. She shows how our institutions work to erase the lived experiences of Black youth and try to erase Black youth themselves.

This book is a creative nonfiction memoir about home and belonging set in the 80s and 90s of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Using a variety of forms including letters, essays and poems, the author reflects on her childhood through a series of letters addressed to all of the current occupants now living in the twenty different houses she moved in and out of with her mother and brother. From blurry non-chronological memories of trying to fit in with her own family as the only mixed East Indian/Black child, to crystal clear recollections of parental drug use, she draws a vivid portrait of memory that still longs for a place and a home.

As a booksmart kid from Toronto, Eternity Martis was excited to move away to Western University for her undergraduate degree. But as one of the few Black students there, she soon discovered that the campus experiences she'd seen in movies were far more complex in reality. Over the next four years, Eternity learned more about what someone like her brought out in other people than she did about herself. She was confronted by white students in blackface at parties, dealt with being the only person of colour in class and was tokenized by her romantic partners. She heard racial slurs in bars, on the street, and during lectures. And she gathered labels she never asked for: Abuse survivor. Token. Bad feminist. But, by graduation, she found an unshakeable sense of self--and a support network of other women of colour.

Tessa McWatt has been called Susie Wong, Pocahontas and "black bitch," and has been judged not black enough by people who assume she straightens her hair. Now, through a close examination of her own body--nose, lips, hair, skin, eyes, ass, bones and blood--which holds up a mirror to the way culture reads all bodies, she asks why we persist in thinking in terms of race today when racism is killing us. How do you tick a box on a census form or job application when your ancestry is Scottish, English, French, Portuguese, Indian, Amerindian, African and Chinese? Shame on Me is a personal and powerful exploration of history and identity, colour and desire from a writer who, having been plagued with confusion about her race all her life, has at last found kinship and solidarity in story.

Daughters of the Sun, Women of the Moon brings together the rich and diverse voices of both Canadian-born and immigrant Black women poets.

The selections in Fierce Departures, drawn from Dionne Brand’s work since 1997, delineate with searing eloquence how history marks and dislocates peoples of the African diaspora, how nations, concretely and conceptually, fail to create safe haven, and how human desire persists nevertheless. Through a widening canvas, Brand unfolds the (im)possibilities of belonging for those whom history has dispossessed. Yet she also shows how Canada, and in particular Toronto, remade by those who alight on it, is a place of contingency. Known for her linguistic intensity and lyric brilliance, Brand consoles through the beauty of her work and disturbs with its uncompromising demand for ethical witness.

Blues singer, preacher, cultural critic, exile, Africadian, high modernist, spoken word artist, Canadian poet--these are but some of the voices of George Elliott Clarke. In a selection of Clarke's best work from his early poetry to his most recent, Blues and Bliss: The Poetry of George Elliott Clarke offers readers an impressive cross-section of those voices. Jon Paul Fiorentino's introduction focuses on this polyphony and his "voice throwing," and shows how the intersections here produce a "troubling" of language. He sketches Clarke's primary interest in the negotiation of cultural space through adherence to and revision of tradition and on the finding of a vernacular that begins in exile, especially exile in relation to African-Canadian communities.

Gardening in the Tropics contains a rich Caribbean world in poems offered to readers everywhere. Olive Senior's rich vein of humour can turn wry and then sharp in satire of colour-consciousness, class-consciousness and racism. But her predominant tone is the verbal equivalent of a pair of wide-open arms.

Social Justice PoetrySpoken-word poet Valerie Mason-John unsettles readers with potent images of ongoing trauma from slavery and colonization. Her narratives range from the beginnings of the African Diaspora to the story of a stowaway on the Windrush, from racism and sexism in Trump's America to the wide impact of the Me Too movement. Stories of entrapment, sexual assault, addictive behaviours, and rave culture are told and contrasted to the strengthening and forthright voice of Yaata, Supreme Being. I Am Still Your Negro is truth that needs to be told, re-told, and remembered. Foreword by George Elliott Clarke.I was your NegroCaptured and sold I am still your negroArrested and killed--from "I Am Still Your Negro"

My partner reads Gregory Scofield -- post-colonial relations (for the missing) -- Post-colonial Sea Salt -- On being published for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd time -- Reconciliation -- Abyss -- Captain Injun -- Pratap Reddy -- The Lime Tree -- Klara du Plessis -- Essay dweller -- Quidditief/Quiddity -- Immaculate conception -- A milk -- Death will desperate -- To the woodcut above my writing desk -- Acknowledgements -- Anthologies ft.diverse/disenfranchised Canadian voices.

In post–World War II Canada, black women's positions within the teaching profession served as sites of struggle and conflict as the nation worked to address the needs of its diversifying population. From their entry into teachers'college through their careers in the classroom and administration, black women educators encountered systemic racism and gender barriers at every step. So they worked to change the system.Using oral narratives to tell the story of black access and education in Ontario between the 1940s and the 1980s, Schooling the System provides textured insight into how issues of race, gender, class, geographic origin, and training shaped women's distinct experiences within the profession.

This groundbreaking collection of profiles, interviews, essays and reviews on such well-known black writers and artists as Nalo Hopkinson, Dionne Brand, Austin Clarke, Lawrence Hill and Edwidge Danticat constitutes a frank conversation on the significance of race in contemporary Black Canadian and American literature. What's a Black Critic to Do? is for anyone looking for a way to talk about the sometimes-taboo topic of race, as it appears in novels, movies and plays. Of interest to Black readers as well as teachers, librarians and book club members, this book is a vital snapshot of contemporary North American culture.

Despite the increasing scope and authority of women's studies, the role of Black women in Canada's history has remained largely unwritten and unacknowledged. This silence supports the common belief that Black people have only recently arrived in Canada and that racism is also a fairly recent development. This book sets the record straight. The six essays collected here explore three hundred years of Black women in Canada, from the seventeenth century to the immediate post-Second World War period. Winner of the Ontario Historical Society's 1996 Joseph Brant award.

The killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012 by a white assailant inspired the Black Lives Matter movement, which quickly spread outside the borders of the United States. The movement's message found fertile ground in Canada, where Black activists speak of generations of injustice and continue the work of the Black liberators who have come before them. Until We Are Free contains some of the very best writing on the hottest issues facing the Black community in Canada. It describes the latest developments in Canadian Black activism, organizing efforts through the use of social media, Black-Indigenous alliances, and more.

In this book, the author delivers an incisive analysis of the relationship between race and art. History is a construction. What happens when we begin to consider stories at the margins, when we grant them centrality? How does that complicate our certainties about who we are, as individuals, as nations, as human beings? Through the lens of visual art, literature, film, and the author's lived experience, the book examines the depiction of Black histories in art, offering new perspectives to challenge the accepted narrative.

While many modern societies are noted for their diversity, the resulting challenge is to determine how citizens from different backgrounds and cultures can see themselves and each other as equals, and be treated equally. In Genuine Multiculturalism, Cecil Foster shows that a society's failure to bridge these differences is the tragedy of modern living and that pretending it is possible to mechanically develop fraternity and solidarity among diverse groups is akin to seeking out comedy. Arguing that genuine multiculturalism is the search for social justice by individuals who have been trapped by ascribed identities or newcomers who have been shut out of perceived ethnic homelands, Foster details how this process, in essence, is the story of the Americas.

A CBC BOOKS MUST-READ NONFICTION BOOK FOR BLACK HISTORY MONTH Smartly dressed and smiling, Canada’s black train porters were a familiar sight to the average passenger—yet their minority status rendered them politically invisible, second-class in the social imagination that determined who was and who was not considered Canadian. Subjected to grueling shifts and unreasonable standards—a passenger missing his stop was a dismissible offense—the so-called Pullmen of the country’s rail lines were denied secure positions and prohibited from bringing their families to Canada, and it was their struggle against the racist Dominion that laid the groundwork for the multicultural nation we know today.

This book is dedicated to the burgeoning academic field of Black Girlhood Studies. Centering the experiences of Black girls in Canada, the US, the Caribbean, and the African continent, established and new scholars provide the theoretical, practical, and pedagogical tools necessary for the advancement of the field and the betterment of Black girls globally. The contributors consider what black girlhood means in the 21st century and how ideas of race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and nationality affect the experiences of Black girls. From self-care and fan fiction to political role models and new media, this collection foregrounds Black girls' experiences to create language that better constructs and explains Black girls' lives from their own words.

"... Richard J. Powell investigates the visual forms of satire produced by black artists in 20th- and 21st-century America. Underscoring the historical use of visual satire as antiracist dissent and introspective critique, Powell argues that it has a distinctly African American lineage. Taking on some of the most controversial works of the past century-- in all their complexity, humor, and provocation-- Powell raises important questions about the social power of art. Expansive in both historical reach and breadth of media presented, Going There interweaves discussions of such works as the midcentury cartoons of Ollie Harrington, the installations of Kara Walker, the paintings of Robert Colescott, and the movies of Spike Lee.

Rinaldo Walcott's groundbreaking study of black culture in Canada, this book caused such an uproar upon its publication in 1997 that Insomniac Press has decided to publish a second revised edition of this perennial best-seller. With its incisive readings of hip-hop, film, literature, social unrest, sports, music and the electronic media, Walcott's book not only assesses the role of black Canadians in defining Canada, it also argues strenuously against any notion of an essentialist Canadian blackness. As erudite on the issue of American super-critic Henry Louis Gates' blindness to black Canadian realities as he is on the rap of the Dream Warriors and Maestro Fresh Wes, Walcott's essays are thought-provoking and always controversial in the best sense of the word. They have added and continue to add immeasurably to public debate.

BlackLife discloses the ongoing destruction of Black people as enacted not simply by state structures, but beneath them in the foundational modernist ideology that underlies thinking around migration and movement, as Black erasure and death are unveiled as horrifically acceptable throughout western culture. Idil Abdillahi and Rinaldo Walcott pull from local history, literature, theory, music, and public policy around everything from arts funding, to crime and mental health––presenting a convincing call to challenge pervasive thought on dominant culture's conception of Black personhood.

Rude is an anthology of critical writing on Black Canadian culture. The anthology is meant to convey the idea of a burgeoning response to Black Canadian cultural expression and what it means both for various Black communities and the Canadian nation. The anthology departs from uncritical celebration to critically engage with Black Canadian expressive cultures. The essayists do more than celebrate Canadian nationalism: they attempt to cast a complex analysis of its limits and its possibilities through the examination of Black lives, cultures and events in Canada and abroad. Rude fills a void in the Canadian cultural landscape, where Black responses to the nation are always framed in terms of anti-racism.

This book provides tools and theoretical frameworks to make sense of how the world is regulated, governed, controlled with regard to the exclusivity of certain members of the society, and in particular, women from marginalized groups. This book, therefore, engages readers by asking thought-provoking questions to interrogate issues of marginality and oppression in society.

This book exposes the racist practices of the Toronto police force, detailing the dozens of times the author had been stopped and interrogated under the controversial practice of carding. The author draws insistent, unyielding attention to the injustices faced by Black Canadians on a daily basis: the devastating effects of racist policing; the hopelessness produced by an education system that expects little of its black students and withholds from them the resources they need to succeed more fully; the heartbreak of those vulnerable before the child welfare system and those separated from their families by discriminatory immigration laws. In this book, he chronicles just one year--2017--in the struggle against racism in this country.

Eternity Martis was smart, bookish and excited to go to university. But once she got to campus, life wasn't what she imagined. She was often the only student of colour in classes, at parties and in dorms, and had to face racial slurs, students in blackface at parties and more on a regular basis. They Said This Would Be Fun is a memoir about the difficulty of navigating through white spaces as a student of colour and asks us to confront the systemic issues that define the college experience for racialized and marginalized students.