Eyeing the north star?: Figuring Canada in postslavery fiction and drama

Abstract

This article argues that a comparative, diasporic poetics is essential to an analysis of 'postslavery' literature in Canada. The transnational history of slavery links Canada to other British colonies in the Caribbean as well as to the USA, and contemporary African-Canadian writers share in and draw on a diasporic literary legacy. I focus on the trope of genealogy in three works – George Elliott Clarke's Beatrice Chancy, Lawrence Hill's Any Known Blood and Dionne Brand's At the Full and Change of the Moon – and I argue that the diasporic linkages rehearsed in these texts work to challenge both Canadian national narratives and national isolation in the hemisphere. I also argue for the importance of a comparative, hemispheric approach to the study of these texts, as well as for the importance of putting Canada back into the Americas in studies such as this.