Detailed Table of Contents

The Black Atlantic Reconsidered: Black Canadian Writing, Cultural History, and the Presence of the Past

INTRODUCTION

CH. 1 – MODERNITY AND CANADIAN TIME-SPACES OF THE BLACK ATLANTIC 3

BLACK CANADIAN STUDIES AND THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SECOND BLACK CANADIAN RENAISSANCE 6

The Early Second Renaissance: 1960s-1990s 8
The Presence of the Past 11
Past Speaking 15
Speaking and Writing the Past 20

ANOTHER BLACK ATLANTIC: THE TIMES AND SPACES OF MODERNITY 27

Intertextual Relations 28

PART I: EARLY TESTIMONY AND THE BLACK CANADIAN NINETEENTH CENTURY

CH. 2 – Slavery and Early Black Canadian Writing 33

SLAVERY AND EARLY TESTIMONY IN NEW FRANCE 33
WRITING AND READING CARLETON’S “BOOK OF NEGROES” 36

The War of Independence and the Provisions for Peace 37
Negotiating Freedom: The “Cases” in the “Book of Negroes” 39
Incomplete Life Stories: The Inspection Roll 43

EARLY BLACK NARRATIVES, NOVA SCOTIA, AND MODERNITY 52

The Black Nova Scotian Accounts of John Marrant, Boston King, and David George 52
African Diaspora, Nova Scotia, and Modernity 62

CH. 3 – THE BLACK CANADIAN NINETEENTH CENTURY 67

BLACK MIGRATION TO UPPER CANADA BEFORE ABOLITION 68

Israel Lewis, Austin Steward, and the Wilberforce Settlement 69

A FORMER ANTI-SLAVERY EDITOR IN CANADA: SUSANNA STRICKLAND AND THE SLAVE NARRATIVES OF MARY PRINCE AND ASHTON WARNER 71

Blackness in Moodie’s Canadian Texts 79

SLAVE NARRATIVES FROM ABOLITION TO THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT (1834-50) 87

The Narratives of Moses Roper and Lewis and Milton Clarke 88
Josiah Henson, Dawn, and Black Education 90
Canada West and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850: Harriet Tubman, Henry and Mary Bibb, and the North American Convention of Colored Freemen in Toronto 93

MARY ANN SHADD, CHATHAM, AND THE BLACK CANADIAN RENAISSANCE 97

The Black Canadian Renaissance 97
Mary Ann Shadd and Transformation: “We Can … Change That Condition” 99
Samuel Ringgold Ward’s Description of the Black Communities in Canada 117
Recording Black Economic and Emotional Geographies of Canada West: The Accounts of Benjamin Drew, William Wells Brown, and Samuel Gridley Howe 121
Chatham and Brazilian Slavery: Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua 129
Chatham in the later 1850s: Martin Delany, Mary Ann Shadd, John Brown 130
Osborne P. Anderson, Shadd, and A Voice from Harper’s Ferry 142

FROM THE MID-1860S INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 145

PART II: THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST

CH. 4 – SLAVERY, THE BLACK CANADIAN NINETEENTH CENTURY, AND CARIBBEAN CONTEXTS IN CONTEMPORARY BLACK CANADIAN WRITING 155

QUESTIONING BLACK CANADIAN HISTORY: LORRIS ELLIOTT’S “ANGÉLIQUE” FRAGMENT 157
BLACK CANADIAN HISTORY AND LAWRENCE HILL’S ANY KNOWN BLOOD AND THE BOOK OF NEGROES 160

Any Known Blood: Revising and Re-appropriating the Canadian Slave Narrative 160
The Book of Negroes 170

CANADIAN SLAVERY AND BLACK CANADIAN WRITING: LORENA GALE AND GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE 185

Imagining Angélique 186
Transforming the Sentence of History: Lorena Gale’s Angélique 189
After Angélique, beyond Black Angels: George Elliott Clarke’s Beatrice Chancy 194

ANGLOPHONE CARIBBEAN CANADIAN WRITERS AND THE LEGACIES OF THE PAST 205

Caribbeanness and Caribbean Canadian Time-Spaces 207
Caribbean Canadian Farm and Domestic Workers: “Like Nothing Ever Change” 213
Witnessing Empire: Austin Clarke’s The Polished Hoe 221
A “story that cannot but must be told”: Marlene NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! 232
Dionne Brand: Witnessing and the Inventory 239
Second-Generation Diasporas and the City: Brand, Chariandy, Alexis 257

WRITING THE HAITIAN DIASPORA IN QUEBEC 275

Oral Knowledge and Intergenerational Transmission in Marie-Célie Agnant’s La Dot de Sara and Le Livre d’Emma 275
The Trauma of Duvalier Repression and Impossible Returns: Agnant, Etienne, Ollivier, and Laferrière 280

CH. 5 – OTHER BLACK CANADAS 291

THE BLACKENING OF QUEBEC: JAZZ, DIASPORA, AND THE HISTORY AND WRITING OF BLACK ANGLOPHONE MONTREAL 292

Black Spaces/White Novels: Hugh MacLennan, Gabrielle Roy, and Morley Callaghan 293

AFRICVILLE AND THE AFRICADIAN RENAISSANCE 307
DIASPORIC CROSSROADS AND THE BLACK PRAIRIES: FOGGO, HARRIS, EDUGYAN 316

Listening to Black Prairies History: Cheryl Foggo’s Pourin’ Down Rain 317
The Caribbean Prairies: Claire Harris’ Drawing Down a Daughter 320
African Antecedents in Aster/ Amber Valley: Esi Edugyan’s The Second Life of Samuel Tyne 329

BLACK BRITISH COLUMBIA: WAYDE COMPTON AND ROOTED TRANSCULTURAL IMPROVISATION 337