Description
Book SynopsisAn exhaustive volume of leading scholarship in the field of Black Canadian history, Unsettling the Great White North highlights the diverse experiences of persons of African descent within the chronicles of Canada’s past. The book considers histories and theoretical framings within the disciplines of history, sociology, law, and cultural and gender studies to chart the mechanisms of exclusion and marginalization in "multicultural" Canada and to situate Black Canadians as speakers and agents of their own lives. Working to interrupt the myth of benign whiteness that has been deeply implanted into the country’s imagination, Unsettling the Great White North uncovers new narratives of Black life in Canada.
Trade Review"Under the stewardship of Johnson and Aladejebi, Unsettling the Great White North provides an important and necessary scholarly intervention that recognizes Black agency in Canadian history and will certainly serve as a guiding anthology for both classrooms and the public in how we think about Canada." -- Cameron Tardif *
American Review of Canadian Studies *
Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Michele A. Johnson and Funké Aladejebi Bookend I: The Future Has a Past: Canadian History and Black Modernity 1. Critical Histories of Blackness in Canada Barrington Walker Section One: Enslaving Blackness 2. Planting Slavery in Nova Scotia’s Promised Land, 1759–1775 Karolyn Smardz Frost 3. “Where, Oh Where, is Bet?”: Locating Enslaved Black Women on the Ontario Landscape Natasha Henry Section Two: Constructing Blackness across Borders and Boundaries 4. A Forgotten Generation: African Canadian History between Fugitive Slaves and World War I Adam Arenson 5. Petitioning Power: Canadian Racial Consciousness Meets Alabama Injustice, 1958 Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey Section Three: Building Black Communities and Shaping Black Resilience 6. The Shiloh Baptist Church: The Pillar of Strength in Edmonton’s African American Community, 1910–1940 David Este and Jenna Bailey 7. Establishing Communities Amoaba Gooden 8. Montreal’s Black Renaissance Sean Mills Section Four: Controlling Black (Working) Bodies 9. “Likely to become a public charge”: Examining Black Migration to Eastern Canada, 1900–1930 Claudine Bonner 10. “…not likely to do well or to be an asset to this country”: Canadian Restrictions of Black Caribbean Female Domestic Workers, 1910–1955 Michele A. Johnson Section Five: “Schooling” Black Canadians 11. Stories from the Little Black School House Sylvia D. Hamilton 12. Black Education: The Complexity of Segregation in Kent County’s Nineteenth-Century Schools Deirdre McCorkindale 13. “We have to strive for the best”: The High Aspirations of Black Caribbean-Canadian Youth of the 1970s and 1980s Carl E. James Section Six: Creating New Diasporic Communities: Continental African Experiences 14. Creating Spaces of Belonging: Building a New African Community in Vancouver Gillian Creese 15. “The part of you that’s Rwanda”: Creating a Rwandan Diaspora Community in the Greater Toronto Area in the Early Twenty-First Century Anna Ainsworth Section Seven: Locating Historical Black Presences in Cultural Artefacts 16. Race, Community, and the Picturing of Identities: Photography and the Black Subject in Ontario, 1860 to 1900 Cheryl Thompson and Julie Crooks 17. Hogan’s Alley Remixed: Wayde Compton’s Performance Bond and the New Black Can(aan)Lit Paul Watkins 18. Jazz, Diaspora, and the History and Writing of Black Anglophone Montreal Winfried Siemerling Section Eight: Black Women’s Orality and Knowings 19. “I Don’t Know if I Should Say This”: Black Women, Oral History, and Contesting the Great White North Funké Aladejebi 20. Re-Thinking and Re-Framing RDS: A Black Woman’s Perspective Esmerelda M.A. Thornhill Bookend II: The Past Has a Future: Critical Intellectual Histories of Blackness 21. Wrestling with Multicultural Snake Oil: A Newcomer’s Introduction to Black Canada Daniel McNeil
