After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region

After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region

by Wayde Compton
After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region

After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region

by Wayde Compton

Paperback

$18.95 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
    Choose Expedited Shipping at checkout for delivery by Friday, March 22
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

"Compton pushes us to look beneath the surface—past those comforting tales of nationhood and racial solidarity—to the more nebulous and ever-shifting truth. This is a brilliant and original work that should be mandatory reading for any student of race and history."—Danzy Senna, author of Caucasia

After Canaan, the first nonfiction book by acclaimed African Canadian poet Wayde Compton, repositions the North American discussion of race in the wake of the tumultuous twentieth century. Written from the perspective of someone who was born and lives outside of African American culture, it riffs on the concept of Canada as a promised land (or "Canaan") encoded in African American myth and song since the days of slavery. These varied essays, steeped in a kind of history rarely written about, explore the language of racial misrecognition (also known as "passing"), the failure of urban renewal, humor as a counterweight to "official" multiculturalism, the poetics of hip hop turntablism, and the impact of the Obama phenomenon on the way we speak about race itself. Compton marks the passing of old modes of antiracism and multiculturalism, and points toward what may or may not be a "post-racial" future, but will without doubt be a brave new world of cultural perception.

After Canaan is a brilliant and thoughtful consideration of African (North) American culture as it attempts to redefine itself in the Obama era.

Wayde Compton's previous books include the poetry collections 49th Parallel Psalm and Performance Bond. He teaches English in Vancouver, BC.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781551523743
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press, Limited
Publication date: 05/10/2011
Pages: 176
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Wayde Compton is a Vancouver writer whose previous books are the poetry collections 49th Parallel Psalm and Performance Bond and the anthology Bluesprint. He and Jason de Couto perform turntable-based sound poetry as a duo called the Contact Zone Crew. He teaches English at Emily Carr Universityand Coquitlam College in Vancouver.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Pheneticizing Versus Passing

Blackvoice and Stately Ways: Isaac Dickson, Mifflin Gibbs, and Black British Columbia’s First Trials of Authenticity

Seven Routes to Hogan’s Alley and Vancouver’s Black Community

The Repossession of Fred Booker

Alexis Mazurin, the Hot Sauce Posse, and Black History Month on the Edge

Turntable Poetry, Mixed-Race, and Schizophonophilia

Obama and Language
From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews