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

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

CODA

CH. 6 – OTHER CANADAS, OTHER AMERICAS, THE BLACK ATLANTIC RECONSIDERED 350

Appendix: Timeline 362

Notes 397

WORKS CITED 485

INDEX 523