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
- Social Aesthetics and Transcultural Improvisation: Turntablism in 49th Parallel Psalm and Performance Bond 339