Awards

• Winner of Prix Gabrielle-Roy (section Anglais) 2015

Overview

The Black Atlantic Reconsidered is the first comprehensive work to explore Black Canadian literature from its beginnings to the present in the broader context of the Black Atlantic world. Winfried Siemerling traces the evolution of black Canadian witnessing and writing from slave testimony in New France and the 1783 ""Book of Negroes"" through the work of contemporary black Canadian writers including Austin Clarke, George Elliott Clarke, Dionne Brand, Wayde Compton, and Esi Edugyan. Arguing that Black writing in Canada is deeply imbricated in a historic transnational network, Winfried Siemerling explores the powerful presence of Black Canadian history, slavery, the Underground Railroad, and the Black diaspora in the work of contemporary Black Canadian writers. Individual chapters examine the literature that has emerged from Quebec, Nova Scotia, the Prairies, and British Columbia, with attention to writing in both English and French.

Full Product Details

9782760337329

Table of Contents

Reviews

"""Siemerling ... [invokes] the spectres of past into the sounding mix of the present, providing rallying cries that allow us to imagine the kind of future we want for a multicultural Canada that can, and must, continue to be conceived within locally and globally imbricated spaces.""-- """"The Presence of the Past"" in Spec. issue of Canadian Literature / Litt�rature Canadienne, 224 (Spring 2015): 144-146."" ""The Black Atlantic Reconsidered offers a meticulously researched, contextualized, and engaging exploration of Black Canadian writing. A must-read for any person who desires a comprehensive meditation on Black Canadian writing past and present. Winfried Siemerling's thorough and thoughtful book helps to fill a mighty void, and will open the door to more conversations about one of Canada's most vital, yet understudied literary communities."" ""This powerfully rendered text brings us closer to a definitive understanding of the entire 'circum-Atlantic network' in its critical interrogation of the Canadian scene-its histories, cultures, and literatures; routed through the times and spaces of Canada, we come upon the Black Atlantic once again as a reconfigured repertoire of actual and archival resources that elaborate upon and expand our identitarian signatures. Mining the deep structures of Canadian historiographies, Siemerling lovingly and masterfully provides a prehensile reading of the virtually inexhaustible richness of African Canadian literary (and musical) culture--its past as well as its quite stunning contemporaneity."" ""Winfried Siemerling's The Black Atlantic Reconsidered is the book that students of the black literary experience in the New World have been waiting for, without fully appreciating it was missing, for generations. Not only does it open our eyes to the monumental importance of black Canadian writing, from enslavement in New France to North Star escapes to the explosion in diasporic expressions from the 1960s to today; it forces us to expand our understanding of the boundaries of the African journey in the New World upward, to where they belong and always have been. Siemerling's scholarship on Canada's place in the wider black Atlantic should be read and taught for many years to come."" � Ce texte percutant nous rapproche d'une compr�hension d�finitive de l'ensemble du ""r�seau Circum-Atlantique"" dans l'examen critique qu'il propose de la sc�ne canadienne, de ses histoires, de ses cultures et de ses litt�ratures. � travers les routes et les espaces-temps canadiens, l'Atlantique noir se reconfigure � partir d'un r�pertoire de ressources anciennes et actuelles qui approfondissent et �largissent nos identit�s. Avec brio et sensibilit�, Siemerling propose une lecture utile de la richesse virtuellement in�puisable de la culture litt�raire (et musicale) afro-canadienne, de son pass� et de son extraordinaire contemporan�it�. � � Les �critures noires du Canada est le livre qu'attendaient depuis des g�n�rations les �tudiants de l'exp�rience litt�raire noire au Nouveau Monde, sans s'�tre rendu pleinement compte de son absence. Non seulement cet ouvrage nous fait prendre pleinement conscience de l'importance cruciale de l'�criture canadienne noire - de l'asservissement de la Nouvelle-France aux �vasions vers l'�toile du Nord jusqu'� l'explosion des expressions diasporiques des ann�es 1960 � aujourd'hui - mais il nous am�ne � donner sa pleine dimension � notre compr�hension des fronti�res, de la trajectoire africaine au Nouveau Monde. [Les travaux] de recherche �rudite de Siemerling sur la place du Canada au sein de l'Atlantique noir m�rite d'�tre lus et enseign�s pendant de nombreuses ann�es. � � Les �critures noires du Canada pr�sente une recherche fouill�e, balis�e et engageante de l'�criture des Noirs au Canada. Il s'agit d'un incontournable pour quiconque souhaite plonger dans une r�flexion exhaustive sur l'�criture des Noirs au Canada dans le pass� et dans le pr�sent. L'ouvrage rigoureux et judicieux de Winfried Siemerling comble en partie une lacune et ouvre la voie � de nouvelles discussions sur l'une des communaut�s litt�raires les plus dynamiques du Canada, mais encore peu �tudi�e. � � Siemerling... [�voque] les spectres du pass� dans le contexte vibrant du pr�sent, offrant des cris de ralliement qui nous invitent � imaginer l'avenir que nous souhaitons pour un Canada multiculturel qui peut et doit continuer d'�tre fa�onn� au sein d'espaces qui s'imbriquent les uns aux autres localement et mondialement. �-- """"The Presence of the Past"" in Spec. issue of Canadian Literature / Litt�rature Canadienne, 224 (Spring 2015): 144-146."" Laur�at du Prix Gabrielle-Roy 2015 (section Anglais) d�cern� par l'Association des litt�ratures canadienne et qu�b�coise pour le meilleur ouvrage de critique litt�raire publi� au Canada et �crit en anglais. � Dans Les �critures noires du Canada, Winfried Siemerling examine l'�criture des Noirs au Canada en anglais et en fran�ais, du d�but du dix-huiti�me si�cle jusqu'au pr�sent en la situant dans son contexte vis-�-vis de l'�tat-nation et de l'Atlantique noir transnational. Ouvrage � la fois novateur et important, il favorisera les discussions en classe et � l'universit� sur ce corpus peu �tudi�. Gr�ce � une brillante analyse des repr�sentations litt�raires de l'histoire chez les Noirs du Canada, il marquera l'histoire. � Winner of the Association for Canadian and Qu�bec Literatures 2015 Gabrielle Roy Prize (English section), for best book of Canadian literary criticism written in English ""Winfried Siemerling's The Black Atlantic Reconsidered: Black Canadian Writing, Cultural History, and the Presence of the Past is a ground-breaking and consequential volume. It examines Black Canadian writing in both English and French from the early eighteenth century to the present, contextualizing it vis-�-vis the nation-state and the transnational black Atlantic. Poised to galvanize scholarly and classroom conversations on this understudied corpus, Siemerling's book, which analyzes Black Canadian literary representations of history, is history-making in its own right."""

Author Information

Winfried Siemerling (Author) Winfried Siemerling is University Research Chair and Professor of English at the University of Waterloo, Associate of the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute at Harvard University, author of The New North American Studies and co-editor of Canada and Its Americas: Transnational Navigations. Philippe Mongeau (Contributor) Philippe Mongeau is Metadata Librarian at the University of Delaware where he specializes in the cataloguing and metadata of rare books and special collections. He updated the timeline included in Les écritures noires du Canada.

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