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Historically Canadians have considered themselves to be more or less free of racial prejudice. Although this conception has been challenged in recent years, it has not been completely dispelled. In Colour-Coded, Constance Backhouse illustrates the tenacious hold that white supremacy had on our...

This groundbreaking collection of profiles, interviews, essays and reviews on such well-known black writers and artists as Nalo Hopkinson, Dionne Brand, Austin Clarke, Lawrence Hill and Edwidge Danticat constitutes a frank conversation on the significance of race in contemporary Black Canadian and...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES * THE WASHINGTON POST * NPR * PEOPLE * TIME MAGAZINE * VANITY FAIR * GLAMOUR New York Times<...

If asked to list the greatest innovators of modern American poetry, few of us would think to include Jay-Z or Eminem in their number. And yet hip hop is the source of some of the most exciting developments in verse today. The media uproar in response to its controversial lyrical content has obscured...

Dionne Brand, author of the Griffin Poetry Prize-winning collection Ossuaries, returns with a startlingly original work about the act of writing itself. On a lonely wharf a clerk in an ink blue coat inspects bales and bales of paper that hold a poet's accumulated left-hand...

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...

WINNER OF THE 2020 PULITZER PRIZE FOR POETRY Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award "100 Notable Books of the Year," The New York Times Book Review One Book, One Philadelphia Citywide Reading Program Selection, 2021 "By some literary magic--no, it's...

How policing became the major political issue of our time Combining firsthand accounts from activists with the research of scholars and reflections from artists, Policing the Planet traces the global spread of the broken-windows policing strategy, first established in New York...

Winner of the 2002 Scotiabank Giller Prize and of the 2003 Commonwealth Writers' Prize: Best Book (Canada and the Caribbean) When an elderly Bimshire village woman calls the police to confess to a murder, the result is a shattering all-night vigil that brings...

The long-awaited new work from one of Canada's leading intellectuals and poets, Black is a brilliant and fiery look at race and culture. Its genesis is Clark's time at Duke University in the late '90s; that experience unleashed political and personal outrage. This poetry is white-hot with honesty...

Award-winning poet and scholar, George Elliott Clarke edits this pioneer collection of passionate, spiritual, earthy and liberating prose, poetry and song.. His first book of poetry, 'Saltwater Spirituals and Deeper Blues' appeared from Pottersfield Press in 1983 and 'Whylah Falls', a second volume,...

Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature is a pioneering study of African-Canadian literary creativity, laying the groundwork for future scholarly work in the field. Based on extensive excavations of archives and texts, this challenging passage through twelve essays presents a...

In a powerful, poetic missive, award-winning author-illustrator Maxine Beneba Clarke celebrates the meaning behind the words Black Lives Matter. Little one, when we say Black Lives Matter, we're saying Black people are wonderful-strong. That we...

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller Octavia E. Butler's bestselling literary science-fiction masterpiece, Kindred, now in graphic novel format. More than 35 years after its release, Kindred continues to draw in new readers with its deep exploration of the violence and...

Selected by Emma Watson as the Our Shared Shelf Book Club Pick for January/February 2018 Sunday TimesBestseller Winner of the British Book Awards Non-Fiction Narrative Book of the Year Winner of the Jhalak Prize "This is a book that...

George Washington Black, or "Wash," an eleven-year-old field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is terrified to be chosen by his master's brother as a manservant. To his surprise, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is...

Berlin, 1939. The Hot Time Swingers, a popular jazz band, has been forbidden to play by the Nazis. Their young black trumpet player Hieronymus Falk, declared a musical genius by Louis Armstrong, is arrested in a café and never heard from again. Berlin, 1952. Falk is now a jazz legend, and Hot...

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...

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...

Discover the main features of Emancipation Day celebrations, learn about the people of African ancestry's struggle for freedom, and the victories achieved in the push for equality into the 21st century. On August 1, 1834, 800,000 enslaved Africans in the British...

Kidnapped from Africa as a child, Aminata Diallo is enslaved in South Carolina but escapes during the chaos of the Revolutionary War. In Manhattan she becomes a scribe for the British, recording the names of blacks who have served the King and earned their freedom in Nova Scotia. But the hardship...

"A book to treasure and share across generations." --David Chariandy, author of Brother Beatrice, a young girl of uncertain age, wakes up all alone in a tree house in the forest  How did she arrive in this cozy dwelling, stocked carefully with bookshelves and oatmeal...

Lawrence Hill's remarkable novel, Any Known Blood, amulti-generational story about a Canadian man of mixed race, was met withcritical acclaim and it marked the emergence of a powerful new voice in Canadianwriting. Now Hill, himself a child of a black father and white mother, brings us...

Abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle--a string of slaves-- Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. But years later, she forges her way to freedom, serving the British in the Revolutionary War and...

Censorship and book burning are still present in our lives. Lawrence Hill shares his experiences of how ignorance and the fear of ideas led a group in the Netherlands to burn the cover of his widely successful novel, The Book of Negroes, in 2011. Why do books continue to ignite such strong reactions...

Keita Ali is on the run. Like every boy on the mountainous island of Zantoroland, running is all Keita's ever wanted to do. In one of the poorest nations in the world, running means respect. Running means riches-until Keita is targeted for his father's outspoken political views and...

Mahatma Grafton is a disillusioned university graduate burdened with a famous name, and suffering from the curse of his generation -- a total lack of interest in the state of the world. The son of a retired railway porter from Winnipeg, he returns home for a job as a reporter with The...

"A manual for fixing our culture...In writing that is elegant and penetratingly simple, [hooks] gives voice to some things we may know in our hearts but need an interpreter like her to process."--Black Issues Book Review New York Times bestselling author, acclaimed visionary and cultural...

In childhood, bell hooks was taught that "talking back" meant speaking as an equal to an authority figure and daring to disagree and/or have an opinion. In this collection of personal and theoretical essays, hooks reflects on her signature issues of racism and feminism, politics and pedagogy....

Now a major Netflix documentary The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society. Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in...

The Great Black North is a contemporary remix of the story of Black Canada. Told through the intertwining tapestry of poetic forms found on the page and stage, The Great Black North presents some missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that help fit together a poetic picture of the Black Canadian...

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...

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...

For researchers seeking detailed information about the black diaspora in North America, this authoritative reference provides more than 300 years of black Canadian history, from the first migration of slaves, black loyalists, and Civil War refugees to the expansive movement brought about by the...

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A spellbinding novel that transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. With a new afterword by the author.  This "brutally powerful, mesmerizing story" (...

*FINALIST for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction* *WINNER of the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award* *WINNER of the 2020 Story Prize* *WINNER of the 2020 L.A. Times Book Prize, Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction* ...

This collection features essays on Nova Scotia-born poet, playwright and literary critic George Elliott Clarke. Instrtumental in promoting the writing of writers of African descent, Clarke's work has won awards including the Governor General's Award for poetry. He is also the recipient of seven...

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,...

Winner of the 2017 Robbie Robertson Dartmouth Book Award for Non-Fiction! The Miramichi Reader's best non-fiction book of 2016 In 1946, Viola Desmond was wrongfully arrested for sitting in a whites-only section of a movie theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. In 2010,...

Illus. in full color. Cassie, who flew above New York in Tar Beach, soars into the sky once more. This time, she and her brother Be Be meet a train full of people, and Be Be joins them. But the train departs before Cassie can climb aboard. With Harriet Tubman as her guide, Cassie retraces the steps...

Fifteen years after the publication of Push, one year after the Academy Award-winning film adaptation, Sapphire gives voice to Precious's son, Abdul. In The Kid bestselling author Sapphire tells the electrifying story of Abdul Jones, the son of Push's unforgettable heroine, Precious...

A beautifully illustrated survey of African American art of the twentieth century, including many never-before-seen works by the most important artists of the period. African American Art presents a powerful selection of paintings, sculpture, prints, and photographs by forty-three black artists who...

Almost everything about Wallace, an introverted African-American transplant from Alabama, is at odds with the lakeside Midwestern university town where he is studying for a biochem degree. For reasons of self-preservation, he has kept a distance even from his own friends - some dating each other,...

ONE OF AMAZON'S BEST ART & PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS 0F 2018 AN NPR AND PITCHFORK BEST MUSIC BOOK OF 2018 PICK ONE OF TIME'S 25 BEST PHOTOBOOKS OF 2018 NEW YORK TIMES, ASSOCIATED PRESS,WALLSTREET JOURNAL, ROLLING STONE,AND...

Filled with reproductions of Kehinde Wiley's bold, colorful, and monumental work, this book encompasses the artist's various series of paintings as well as his sculptural work--which boldly explore ideas about race, power, and tradition. Celebrated for his classically styled paintings that depict...

Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Author Award Winner New York Times bestseller "Timely and timeless." -Jacqueline Woodson "Important and deeply moving." -John Green Bestselling and award-winning author Renée Watson offers a powerful...

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * This follow-up to The Underground Railroad brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys unjustly sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. * "One of the most gifted novelists...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * "An American masterpiece" (NPR) that chronicles a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. One of The New York Times's 10...

Using an impressive array of primary and secondary materials, Robin Winks details the diverse experiences of Black immigrants to Canada, including Black slaves brought to Nova Scotia and the Canadas by Loyalists at the end of the American Revolution, Black refugees who fled to Nova Scotia following...