30 - Exiles & Dissidents: Early African-Canadian Literature

In which, in honour of Black History Month, we discuss the early development of African-Canadian literature by covering newspapers, religious narratives, literary networks, and slave narratives from 1785 to 1855. Topics include the Underground Railroad, Loyalists, and myth-making in Canada. It's a big, but great conversation!

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Further Reading & Sources:

• Bynum, Tara. "A Silent Book, Some Kisses, and John Marrant's Narrative," Criticism, vol. 57, no. 1, 2015, pp. 71–90. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13110/criticism.57.1.0071
• Clarke, George Elliott. Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature, University of Toronto Press, 2002.
• Clarke, George Elliott. "This is no hearsay: Reading the Canadian Slave Narratives", Papers of The Bibliographical Society of Canada, Vol. 43, no. 1, Jan. 2005.
• Drew, Benjamin. The Refugee: Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada, 1856. https://books.google.ca/books?id=MAFZVEh3wGEC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
• Ferré-Rode, Sandrine. "A Black Voice from the "other North:" Thomas Smallwood's Canadian Narrative (1851)", Revue française d'études américaines, vol. 137, no. 3, 2013, pp. 23-37. https://www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-etudes-americaines-2013-3-page-23.htm?contenu=article
• Marrant, John. A Narrative of the Lord's Wonderful Dealings with John Marrant, A Black, 1785. https://blackloyalist.com/cdc/documents/diaries/marrant_narrative.htm
• Mensah, Joseph. Black Canadians: History, Experiences, Social Conditions, Fernwood Publishing, 2002.
• Smallwood, Thomas. A Narrative…, 1851 (pp. 13-63) https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/smallwood/smallwood.html
• Siemerling, Winfried. The Black Atlantic Reconsidered: Black Canadian Writing, Cultural History, and the Presence of the Past, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015.
• Winks, Robin. The Blacks in Canada: A History, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1997.

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