The latest work from pioneering scholar George Elliott Clarke, Directions Home is the most comprehensive analysis of African-Canadian texts and writers to date. Building on the discoveries of his critically acclaimed Odysseys Home, Clarke passionately analyses the beautiful complexities and haunting conundrums of this important body of literature.Directions Home explores the trajectories and tendencies of African-Canadian literature within the Canadian canon and the socio-cultural traditions of the African Diaspora. Clarke showcases the importance of little-known texts, including church histories and slave narratives, and offers studies of autobiography, crime and punishment, jazz poetics, and musical composition. The collection also includes studies of significant contemporary writers such as George Boyd and Dionne Brand, and trailblazing African-Canadian intellectuals like A.B. Walker and Anna Minerva Henderson. With its national, bilingual, and historical perspectives, Directions Home is an essential guide to African-Canadian literature.

Table of Contents

OriginationAcknowledgementsPermissionsDivagation: ForewardApproaching African-Canadian Literature (Again)Passport: Essays1. "This is no hearsay": Reading the Canadian Slave Narratives2. A.B. Walker and Anna Minerva Henderson: Two Afro-New Brunswick Responses to "The Black Atlantic"3. Introducing a Distinct Genre of African-Canadian Literature: The Church Narrative4. Afro-Gynocentric Darwinism in the Drama of George Elroy Boyd5. Seeing Through Race: Surveillance of Black Males in Jessome, Satirizing Black Stereotypes in James6. Raising Raced and Erased Executions in African-Canadian Literature: Or, Unearthing Angeique7. Let Us Compare Anthologies: Harmonizing the Founding African-Canadian and Italian-Canadian Literary Collections8. The Idea of Europe in African-Canadian Literature9. Does Afro-Caribbean-Canadian Literature Exist? In the Caribbean?10. Voluptuous Rapine: The Viscous Economy of 'Vice' in the Short Fiction of H. Nigel Thomas and Althea Prince11. Repatriating Arthur Nortje12. Locating the Early Dionne Brand: Landing a Voice13. Maxine Tynes: A Sounding and a Hearing14. Bring Da Noise: The Poetics of Performance, chez d'bi young and Oni Joseph15. Frederick Ward: Writing as JazzNotesCompass: Bibliography

About the Author

George Elliott Clarke is E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto.