The success of George Elliott Clarke’s anthology Eyeing the North Star: Directions in African-Canadian Literature, published a decade ago, demonstrated the growing interest in black Canadian writing. In this exciting, provocative new collection, literary journalist Donna Bailey Nurse provides an up-to-date and fresh perspective on this vibrant, significant, and thriving literature.
Drawing on fiction, poetry, and memoir, this anthology brings together an impressively varied selection of outstanding work by both well-known writers and new voices. Donna Bailey Nurse’s lively and invaluable introduction deftly explores the various themes and motifs that define and illuminate the meaning of being black, while tracing the evolution of this influential literature through colonialism, post-colonialism, and decolonization.
This engaging collection celebrates a body of writing that holds an increasingly visible and important place within Canadian literature, and stands among the finest literary anthologies in the country.
Author(s): Donna Bailey Nurse (ed.)
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: xxi,383
City: Toronto
Introduction
Untitled -- Travelling to find a remedy -- Towards the colour of summer -- Kay in summer / Claire Harris --
from Mother Solitude / Émile Ollivier --
Do angels wear brassieres? -- Meditation on yellow -- The pull of birds -- Thirteen ways of looking at blackbird / Olive Senior -- Poems grow -- Convent girl -- The angel in the house / Pamlea Mordecai --
from Loving this man / Althea Prince --
What we carried that carried us -- never expect -- Questions for Marcus Mosiah Garvey -- from Harvey river: a memoir / Lorna Goodison --
from Dumblair: memories of a Jamaican childhood / Rachel Manley --
Salmon courage -- Meditations on the declension of beauty by the girl with the flying cheek-bones -- the catechist -- Cashew #4 / M. NourbSe Philip --
How loud can the village cock crow? / H. Nigel Thomas --
from My Mother's last dance / Honor Ford-Smith --
from How to make love to a negro -- from an aroma of coffee / Dany Laferrière --
The housegirl / Okey Chigbo --
from The heart does not bend / Makeda Silvera --
from childhood / André Alexis --
On the way to Sunday School -- Memories have tongue -- Christopher Columbus / Afua Cooper --
from Any known blood / Lawrence Hill --
from Dragons cry / Tessa McWatt --
The wisdom of Shelley -- King bee blues -- from George & Rue / George Elliot Clarke --
from Midnight robber / Nalo Hopkinson --
from Kipligat's chance / David N. Odhiambo --
from The widows / Suzette Mayr --
from Sand fro snow: a Caribbean-Canadian chronicle / Robert Edison Sandiford --
Prefact to In the shadow of a saint: a son's journey to understand his father's legacy / Ken Wiwa --
H.N.I.C -- The one -- Flagelliform: #9 -- Flagelliform: fact -- Flagelliform: Ayahuasca / Shane Book --
Girl -- I-Land / Motion --
Legba, landed -- Declaration of the Halfrican nation -- to Poitier / Wayde Compton --
from Kameleon man / Kim Barry Brunhuber --
The black speaker / Jemeni --
from The second life of Samuel Tyne / Esi Edugyan
About the Authors
Suggested Reading
A Note on the Text and Acknowledgments
