Black History Month Non-Fiction for AdultsUnpublished

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2016 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature -- Longlisted2016 RBC Taylor Prize -- LonglistedThe unforgettable memoir of Giller Prize-winning author and poet Austin Clarke, called "Canada's first multicultural writer."Austin Clarke is a distinguished and celebrated novelist and...

A story of a young man's queer coming of age amidst displacement, violence, and alienation Kidnapped by his father on the eve of Somalia's societal implosion, Mohamed Ali was taken first to the Netherlands by his stepmother, and then later on to Canada. Unmoored from his birth...

Bedroom Rapper is a book for obsessive music fans who are looking for the definitive take on what's happened in the last two decades of hip hop, from Cadence Weapon, aka Rollie Pemberton: Pitchfork critic, award-winning musician, producer, DJ, and poet laureate. ...

The long-overdue biography of one of Canada's most iconic Black politicians and activists, written with the country's former Parliamentary Poet Laureate. "Dr. Howard McCurdy is the author of this autobiography. Period," writes George Elliott Clarke in the introduction to Black...

The anticipated debut by a biracial community leader and citizen activist, exploring his lived experience of systemic racism in North America and the paths forward. My race duality has given me a unique perspective on both the Black and white experience in Canada..... What...

'This is an examination of the parts that construct my Black character; from how public schooling shapes our ideas about ourselves to how hip-hop and sports are simultaneously the conduit for both Black abundance and Black boundaries. This book is a meditation on the influences that have shaped...

Inspirational stories of ten Black women and women's collectives from Canadian and American history. Included are leaders and groundbreakers who were anti-slavery activists, business women, health-care activists, civic organizers and educators. Celebrate these remarkable women, some of whom you may...

"Black Writers? African, Bluesy, Classical, Disrespectful,  Erudite, Fiery, Groovy, Haunting, Inspiring, Jazzy, Knowing, Liberating, Militant, Nervy, Optimistic, Pugnacious, Quixotic, Rambunctious, Seductive, Truculent, Urgent, Vivacious, Wicked, X-ray sharp, Yearning, Zesty. And so, they...

What does it mean in the era of Black Lives Matter to continue to ignore and deny the violence that is the foundation of the Canadian nation state? BlackLife discloses the ongoing destruction of Black people as enacted not simply by state structures, but beneath them in the foundational modernist...

Finalist 2024 A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry * Shortlisted 2024 Raymound Souster AwardA rolling call and response between antebellum Black history and the present that mediates it. Somewhere in the cut between Harriet Jacobs and surveillance, Southampton and sneaker game, Lake...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 SHAUGHNESSY COHEN PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING   In Can You Hear Me Now?, Celina Caesar-Chavannes digs deep into her childhood and her life as a young Black woman entrepreneur and politician, and shows us that effective and humane leaders...

Based on research conducted in Black communities, along with over thirty years of teaching experience, Colour Matters presents a collection of essays that engages educators, youth workers, and policymakers to think about the ways in which race shapes the education, aspirations, and...

Winner of the 2018 City of Vancouver Book Award From Vancouver-based writer Chelene Knight, Dear Current Occupant is a creative non-fiction memoir about home and belonging set in the 80s and 90s of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Using a variety of forms,...

In From My Mother's Back: A Journey from Kenya to Canada, Njoki Wane introduces us to her mother, a woman of deep wisdom, and to all the richness of a life lived between two countries. A celebrated professor and award-winning teacher, she shares her journey from a Catholic girls' boarding school...

A moving and vivid memoir of a young girl--long before her starring role in the Degrassi series--who was always switching between worlds, wanting only to be loved When Anais Granofsky's parents meet in the early 1970s, they are foreign and fascinating to each other. Stanley is the son of a...

Living in pre-Civil War Philadelphia, young Black activist Mifflin Gibbs was feeling disheartened from fighting the overwhelming tide of White America's legalized racism when abolitionist Julia Griffith encouraged him to "go do some great thing." These words helped inspire him to become a...

Writer, historian and poet Afua Cooper tells the astonishing story of Marie-Joseph Angélique, a slave woman convicted of starting a fire that destroyed a large part of Montréal in April 1734 and condemned to die a brutal death. In a powerful retelling of Angélique's story--now supported by...

Historic freedom fighter and conductor of the Underground Railroad Harriet Tubman risked her life to ferry enslaved people from America to freedom in Canada. Her legacy instigates and orients this exploration of the history of Black lives and the future of collective struggle in Canada. ...

How She Read is a collection of genre-blurring poems about the representation of Black women, their hearts, minds and bodies, across the Canadian cultural imagination.    Drawing from grade-school vocabulary spellers, literature, history, art, media and pop culture, Chantal Gibson's...

In the tradition of Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, acclaimed novelist David Chariandy's latest is an intimate and profoundly beautiful meditation on the politics of race today....

Insightful, practical lessons on life, on and off the track, from an Olympic and world champion Not only is Andre De Grasse blazingly fast on the track, he's also incredibly popular with his fans. His beaming smile and magnetic personality have won over millions of people around the world....

INSTANT BESTSELLER FINALIST FOR THE HILARY WESTON WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION From a leading scholar on the politics of race comes a work of family history, memoir, and insight gained from a unique journey across the continent, on what it is to be Black in...

A Love Letter to Africville compiles personal stories and photos from former residents of Africville. Much has been written about the struggles of the Africville community, who have been hurt and discriminated against for so long -- but Africville is so much more than the pain. This book corrects...

A Map to the Door of No Return is a timely book that explores the relevance and nature of identity and belonging in a culturally diverse and rapidly changing world. It is an insightful, sensitive and poetic book of discovery. Drawing on cartography, travels, narratives of childhood in the Caribbean...

The debut memoir from award-winning journalist Morgan Campbell: an incredible history of a family's battles across generations, a hilarious and emotional coming-of-age story, and a powerful reckoning with what it means to be Black in Canada--particularly when you have strong American roots....

WINNER OF THE 2023 HILARY WESTON WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION * FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD  A dazzlingly inventive, deeply moving, intellectually bracing exploration of pain and beauty, private memory and public monument, art and complexity in contemporary...

An insightful exploration and moving meditation on identity, art, and belonging from one of the most celebrated writers of the last decade.  What happens when we begin to consider stories at the margins, when we grant them centrality? How does that complicate our certainties about who...

Finalist for 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction * Co-Winner of 2022 Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book After years of secrecy and silence, Rowan McCandless leaves an abusive relationship and rediscovers her voice and identity...

Delving behind Canada's veneer of multiculturalism and tolerance, Policing Black Lives traces the violent realities of anti-blackness from the slave ships to prisons, classrooms and beyond. Robyn Maynard provides readers with the first comprehensive account of nearly four hundred years of state...

The 30th anniversary edition of Cheryl Foggo's landmark work about growing up Black on the Canadian prairies Cheryl Foggo came of age during the 1960s in Calgary, a time when a Black family walking down the street still drew stares from everyone they passed. She grew up in the warm...

SHORTLISTED for the 2021 Speaker's Book Award   LONGLISTED for the 2021 Toronto Book Award The triumph of Saga Boy is the triumph of Blackness everywhere--the irrepressible instinct for survival in a world where Blacks are prey." --Ian Williams, Giller...

FINALIST FOR THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD FOR NON-FICTION   Interrogating our ideas of race through the lens of her own multi-racial identity, critically acclaimed novelist Tessa McWatt turns her eye on herself, her body and this world in a powerful new work of non-fiction...

In the tradition of Ta-Nehisi Coates, a bracing, provocative and perspective-shifting book from one of Canada's most celebrated and uncompromising writers, Desmond Cole. The Skin We're In will spark a national conversation, influence policy and inspire activists.

For readers of The Underground Railroad, The Known World, Bound for Canaan and The Book of Negroes comes the harrowing story of fifteen-year-old escaped slave Cecelia Reynolds, who slips away to freedom in Canada only to return to her childhood home as a free woman many years later. ...

A CBC BOOKS MUST-READ NONFICTION BOOK FOR BLACK HISTORY MONTH Nominated for the Toronto Book Award Smartly dressed and smiling, Canada's black train porters were a familiar sight to the average passenger--yet their minority status rendered them politically invisible, second-class in...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A powerful, moving memoir about what it's like to be a student of colour on a predominantly white campus. A booksmart kid from Toronto, Eternity Martis was excited to move away to Western University for her undergraduate degree. But as one of the...

An exhaustive volume of leading scholarship in the field of Black Canadian history, Unsettling the Great White Northhighlights the diverse experiences of persons of African descent within the chronicles of Canada's past. The book considers histories and theoretical framings within the...

An anthology of African-Canadian writing addressing the most urgent issues facing the Black community in Canada. The killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012 by a white assailant inspired the Black Lives Matter movement, which quickly spread outside the borders of the United States....

Many Canadians know that Viola Desmond is the first Black, non-royal woman to be featured on Canadian currency. But fewer know the details of Viola Desmond's life and legacy. In 1946, Desmond was arrested for refusing to give up her seat in a whites-only section of a movie theatre in New Glasgow,...

In Whiteout: How Canada Cancels Blackness, his new and essential collection of essays, George Elliott Clarke exposes the various ways in which the Canadian imagination demonizes, excludes, and oppresses Blackness. Clarke's range is extraordinary: he canvasses African-Canadian...

A powerful debut collection from an award-winning artist, public speaker, and poet. Trillium Book Award for Poetry, Finalist Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, Shortlist Pat Lowther Memorial Award, Shortlist Raymond Souster Award, Longlist<...