#black canada

[tumamek]

Black people in Canada literally don't know each other because we don't know where the fuck the others are.

[tumamek]

The author of Brother on inherited trauma, not telling stories that make Canada feel good, and how communities endure.

Often, the discourse around race and blackness is American-centric. Was it important for you to show this really Canadian story about blackness?

For me that’s very important, just as it is important to acknowledge that there’s a two-hundred-year legacy of black writing in Canada. And there’s something very specific about how people become black in Canada. It is that process for many groups—of understanding oneself in different terms, and then arriving in Canada and realizing, I am black.

I think about that often—it’s not like my parents, who grew up in Somalia, spent their lives back home thinking about blackness.

Exactly. I imagine it’s a profound realization and it’s so important for us to acknowledge the specificity of that experience, and also the diversity of it—there’s many ways of being black in Canada, of course. At the same time, it’s a different landscape. Someone I really respect highly, Christina Sharpe, talks of different weather systems of blackness and anti-blackness throughout the world and what’s possible in different weather systems.

But at the same time, I think what is also really important in this novel is that in order for the young men to think beyond the narrative of themselves that they’re fed, they then reach beyond Canada in music and culture, and through these cultural references they piece together a bigger sense of what it is to be black and human.

A big part of this story has to do with these young men trying to make sense of their situation and where they fit into society. One thing I found really interesting was how you fit in the struggles of belonging as a first- or second-generation Canadian in the novel. Could you expand on that?

It’s so close to my heart. And maybe that’s one of the things that makes this a Canadian book in certain ways: that idea of a second-generation experience of being racialized and black in Canada, of having parents that come with certain ambitions and illusions about what Canada is. For us to grow up in this context and to know something very deeply about this country, that to me is a perspective that I think is very important—many of our great black Canadian authors write about this perspective, but also have the experience of the immigration issue.

You also see this with the character of the mother in the novel. It’s almost like she has a different understanding of how things work in Canada. She’s cooperative with the cops, for example, she wants to smooth things over. Her sons aren’t as trustful. Do you think there’s a generational difference to how we approach these things?

I think possibly. I mean, I can only speak to how I imagined these particular characters. But there was definitely a difference between how the mother conducted herself with figures of authority—how she imagined that, ultimately, figures of authority would be fair—and how the boys have different assumptions based on different experiences, [that] you can’t assume that a figure of authority will be fair. So out of those two different assumptions and with two different ways of living life, there is the conflict at times between two generations.

There is also authentic love between the generations, and it goes both ways. There are times when the two generations don’t see eye to eye and it’s because they understand Canada differently. We have a very intimate understanding of Canada based on who we are and I imagine our parents have something different based on their hopes and gratitude and all of these sorts of things.

[afrofuturist]

Today in NEW 114, a course I teach at University of Toronto, we will watch the NFB documentary Speakers for the Dead. Created by filmmakers Jennifer Holness and David Sutherland, the film follows unfolding story of the town of Priceville, Ontario where Black settlers preceded Europeans.

Questions to consider: Why was this story buried? Who wanted to unearth this story? Why? Who wanted to keep the story hidden? Why? What role does forgetting play in mainstream settler narratives? What is revealed when this story is revealed?

[ericpoptone]

The Great Black North

The Great Black North

One fact that’s widely overlooked during Black History Month is that it’s not only Black History Month in the US. Besides having the stated aim of highlighting the contributions to human history made by the entire black diaspora, BHM is simultaneously observed in Canada. People who’ve never been to Canada may not believe that black people live there. While it’s true that the black Canadian…

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[tdotgotsoul]

I don’t know if you’ll be able to execute this move after a couple Wednesday night African dance lessons with Dancer/Choreographer extraordinaire Lua Shayenne, but it’s nice to have goals...

http://tinyurl.com/qf8ga95

Photo Courtesy : John Burridge

[nollywoodmagazine]

Trailer for Webseries on Being Black in Canada (Watch)

Trailer for Webseries on Being Black in Canada (Watch)

Below is the first look at a new webseries/multi-media project from a collective calling itself ‘In the Black: Canada’, which aims (in the group’s words) to “engage the Black people in Canada in real, honest, and open cross-media dialogues about their race, the experience of growing up and living in the Great North.”

Beginning on March 10, a series of web videos entitled In the Black: Canada —…

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[medginespeaks]

Follow my twin sis Yaz on her first web series: The Conversation Project. Stories of the Black Diaspora in CANADA. Conversations about identity, history, immigration, relationship, and so much more. http://yazbe.tumblr.com

[bossymarmalade]

The National Film Board has a Black History Month playlist!

I've seen "Speakers for the Dead" and "Remember Africville" and highly, highly recommend them. Both documentaries deal with the erasures of black communities and histories in Canada. I'm hoping that someday the NFB will have a film about the destruction of Hogan's Alley out here in Coast Salish/BC.

"The Road Taken" and "Joe" look like they'll be my next watches, since the train porters and Joe Fortes are both highly relevant to me as a Vancouverite!