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.

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Introduction by Donna Bailey Nurse

Claire Harris (b. 1937)
Untitled
Travelling to Find a Remedy
Towards the Colour of Summer
Kay in Summer

Émile Ollivier (1940-2002)
from Mother Solitude

Olive Senior (b. 1941)
Do Angels Wear Brassieres?
Meditation on Yellow
The Pull of Birds
Thirteen Ways of Looking at Blackbird

Pamela Mordecai (b. 1942)
Poems Grow
Convent Girl
The Angel in the House

Althea Prince (b. 1945)
from Loving This Man

Lorna Goodison (b. 1947)
What We Carried That Carried Us
Never Expect
Questions for Marcus Mosiah Garvey
from From Harvey River: A Memoir

Rachel Manley (b. 1947)
from Drumblair: Memories of a Jamaican Childhood

M. NourbeSe Philip (b. 1947)
Salmon Courage
Meditations on the Declension of Beauty by the Girl with the Flying Cheek-bones
The Catechist
Cashew #4

H. Nigel Thomas (b. 1947)
How Loud Can the Village Cock Crow?

Honor Ford-Smith (b. 1951)
from My Mother’s Last Dance

Dany Laferrière (b. 1953)
from How to Make Love to a Negro
from An Aroma of Coffee

Okey Chigbo (b. 1955)
The Housegirl

Makeda Silvera (b. 1955)
from The Heart Does Not Bend

André Alexis (b. 1957)
from Childhood

Afua Cooper (b. 1957)
On the Way to Sunday School
Memories Have Tongue
Christopher Columbus

Lawrence Hill (b. 1957)
from Any Known Blood

Tessa McWatt (b. 1959)
from Dragons Cry

George Elliott Clarke (b. 1960)
The Wisdom of Shelley
King Bee Blues
from George & Rue

Nalo Hopkinson (b. 1960)
from Midnight Robber

David N. Odhiambo (b. 1965)
from Kipligat’s Chance

Suzette Mayr (b. 1967)
from The Widows

Robert Edison Sandiford (b. 1968)
from Sand for Snow: A Caribbean-Canadian Chronicle

Ken Wiwa (b. 1968)
from the Preface to In the Shadow of a Saint: A Son’s Journey to Understand His Father’s Legacy

Shane Book (b. 1970)
HNIC
The One
Flagelliform: #9
Flagelliform: Fact
Flagelliform: Ayahuasca

Motion (b. 1970)
Girl
I-Land

Wayde Compton (b. 1972)
Legba, Landed
Declaration of the Halfrican Nation
To Poitier

Kim Barry Brunhuber (b. 1973)
from Kameleon Man

Jemeni (b. 1974)
The Black Speaker

Esi Edugyan (b. 1977)
from The Second Life of Samuel Tyne



About the Authors
Suggested Reading
A Note on the Text and Acknowledgements

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Donna Bailey Nurse is a literary journalist, a lecturer, a critic for BookTelevision, and the author of What’s a Black Critic to Do?: Interviews, Profiles and Reviews of Black Writers. She is a frequent book reviewer for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Toronto Star, and the Montreal Gazette, and her articles exploring race and culture have appeared in these publications as well as in Maclean’s, Publishers Weekly, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe. She lives in Toronto.

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