{"title":"\"I'm Divorcing Because I Drank Lake Ontario\": Marital Breakdown in Ghanaian Immigrant Families in Toronto","authors":"M. Donkor","doi":"10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.297","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.297","url":null,"abstract":"Much of the recent research on immigrant women in Canada has been focused on women from Asia perhaps due to the relatively large number of immigrants who have arrived in Canada in the past two decades from that part of the world. But it is also a fact that a significant minority of immigrants, including women, have come from the African Diaspora and made Canada their home. These African women have influenced and have in turn been influenced by Canadian culture. Yet there is relative dearth of information about them as women and as immigrants. The relative dearth of information about African immigrant women skews our understanding of the Black experience in Canada. This article fills a gap in the literature by examining the dynamics of gender roles and expectations in Ghanaian immigrant families.","PeriodicalId":202897,"journal":{"name":"Southern Journal of Canadian Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116763833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Caribbean Migratory Experiences in Queen Macoomeh's Tales from Icebox Land and Mutabaruka's Poetry","authors":"Babacar M’Baye","doi":"10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.295","url":null,"abstract":"This essay analyzes the various ways in which Queen Macoomeh's Tales from Icebox Land (2007) and selected poems of Mutabaruka represent the conditions of Caribbean immigrants in either Canada, England, and (or) the United States since the 1960s and 70s. The paper attempts to uncover the subversive, diasporic, and postcolonial qualities of pivotal West Indian literature that mainstream journals and scholars have neglected. In an attempt to reveal the intellectual and resistive nature of such literature, I place the two authors' writings in historical contexts which reveal the multifaceted experiences of expatriate West Indian populations who have fought hard for equality, citizenship, admissibility, and cultural space in Canada, England, and (or) the United States since the middle of the twentieth century.","PeriodicalId":202897,"journal":{"name":"Southern Journal of Canadian Studies","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122570715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Always a Domestic?: The Question of Canadian Redemption and Belonging in Selected Literature by Black Canadian Writers","authors":"S. Beckford","doi":"10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.294","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.294","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: The narratives of black writers of Caribbean descent living in Canada provide a useful perspective on blacks and belonging in Canada. Their stories elevate the history and legacy of the Domestic Worker Program which from the 1950s brought young black women from the British Caribbean to Canada.1 This program began in an era when Canada's immigration policies severely restricted Caribbean people from migrating to and settling in Canada. These early immigrants were the forerunners of later streams of black immigrants from around the world. In my reading of a selection of fiction by Austin Clarke, Dionne Brand, Cecil Foster, and David Chariandy, I argue that their narratives show that while immigration policies may have changed, the social positioning and inequalities imposed on the domestics still explain the social roles and positioning of blacks in Canada. These writers speculate whether, historically, the narrative of the black female in Canada is always to be imagined as a domestic.","PeriodicalId":202897,"journal":{"name":"Southern Journal of Canadian Studies","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123698598","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction: Constructing Black Canada","authors":"Amoaba Gooden","doi":"10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.285","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.285","url":null,"abstract":"In the spring of 2010, a call for papers on constructing blackness in Canada was issued. The intent of the call was to highlight the ways in which scholars, artists and community activists were engaging with the African diaspora in Canada. What emerged from that call was more than what I expected and is remarkably illustrative of the profound ways in which many are seeking to alter how we think about blackness in Canada.","PeriodicalId":202897,"journal":{"name":"Southern Journal of Canadian Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121867144","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"I didn't want to be anything special. I just wanted to teach school\": A Case Study of Black Female Educators in Colchester, Ontario, 1960","authors":"Funké Aladejebi","doi":"10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.292","url":null,"abstract":"The story of School SecBon #11 (S.S. #11) stood as a sharp reminder of racial injustice and the black experience in Canada. Located in Essex County, Ontario, the separate school maintained a predominately black student attendance until 1965, when parents and school board members negotiated its eventual closure. As the location of the last racially segregated school in Ontario, Canada, S.S. #11 remained one of the many institutional forms of racial segregation in Canada. This paper endeavors to prove that national policies surrounding multiculturalism and human rights did not eradicate local practices of racial prejudice and discrimination. More importantly, I will argue two main points, first, that African Canadian action in Colchester stood as a microcosm of black activism throughout Canada. The second part of this paper will focus on S.S. #11's black teachers who advocated equal education while holding paradoxical positions of compliance and resistance within the Colchester community. In advancing a case study on Colchester Township, this paper proposes to examine fragmented province-wide educational standards and problematic race relations in Colchester as indicative of lived experiences in various Canadian communities. Ultimately, this research will speak about subtle nuances in the Canadian educational system that tended to remove blacks as Canadian citizens and active historical agents.","PeriodicalId":202897,"journal":{"name":"Southern Journal of Canadian Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127601604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"Other/ed\" Kinds of Blackness: An Afrodiasporic Versioning of Black Canada","authors":"Mark V. Campbell","doi":"10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.288","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.288","url":null,"abstract":"For centuries Canada has been home to several overlapping diasporas partially consisting of African Americans refugees, exiled Maroons, Black Loyalists, and many others migrant groups from various African diasporas. Accordingly, the possibility of 'a' Black Canadian identity remains illusive, due in part to continual influxes of members of the African diaspora into Canada. The rigidity of a single unifying identity and the seemingly porous nature of national boundaries urges us to move towards a conceptual shift that refuses to seek a unifying discursive identity position. Importantly, black identity politics in Canada have benefited from the rise of Continental African voices in Canadian hip hop music. One of the goals of this paper is to expand the conceptual terrain of overlapping African diasporas illuminated by Continental African hip hoppers in Canada. Thus, both the lyrical innovations and geopolitical orientations of artists like Shad and K'Naan highlight the overlapping nature African diasporas in Canada, opening new ways to think more expansively about Black Canadian identity as Afrodiasporic identity. Importantly, the main contribution of this paper is to mobilize versioning as a conceptual tool that remixes our contemporary notions of Black Canada to highlight some of the ways in which we might trouble (or update) blackness in Canada, particularly paying attention to the kinds of identity interventions made possible by newcomer East African populations within Canada's diaspora space.","PeriodicalId":202897,"journal":{"name":"Southern Journal of Canadian Studies","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129252280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"For Us by Us (FUBU): The Politicized Space of Black Women's Entrepreneurship in Canada","authors":"M. Knight","doi":"10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.293","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.293","url":null,"abstract":"The Black presence in Canada is most commonly described as a homogeneous foreign presence that emerged during the 1960s. In this paper, I explore how Afro-Caribbean women entrepreneurs in creative industries deploy a counter-discourse against hegemonic racist white discourses of blackness in Canada. The counter-narrative they deploy, that I call For Us by Us discourse, challenges the official national story of Blacks in Canada. Black women rearticulate, through their business activities, a Canadian blackness that is defined by them. This articulation is described in both local, as rooted in Canada and global, Black diaspora, ways. The notion of the Black diaspora allows for great malleability and fluidity of notions of identity and belonging. This powerful political counter-discourse can, however, also be exclusionary when it too homogenizes identity. This counter-discourse, however contested, is made possible through entrepreneurship. Participation in this status of work is very strategic, in that, it allows for the creation of political spaces, aimed at developing community, that are often denied to Blacks.","PeriodicalId":202897,"journal":{"name":"Southern Journal of Canadian Studies","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121418374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"Are African Canadians Always and Only Marginals and Transients?\" The Politics and Poetics of Fanon's Children","authors":"D. McNeil","doi":"10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.287","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.287","url":null,"abstract":"Robin Winks's The Blacks in Canada (1971) is advertised as the only historical survey that covers all aspects of the Black experience in Canada, from the introductioon of slavery in 1628 to the first wave of Caribbean immigration in the 1950s and 1960s. However, its depiction of African Canadians as inauthentic Blacks and aberrant Canadians has been critiqued by intellectuals such as George Elliott Clarke. This paper draws on material from the Robin Winks archives at Yale University in order to substantiate Clarke's charges against the small-l liberal, American bias of Winks's account. In doing so, it contends that Clarke can be read as one of 'Frantz Fanon's children', i.e. one of the 'honest intellectuals' born circa 1952 (the first publication of Fanon's Peau noire, masques blancs) and 1961 (the original publication of Fanon's ties Damn","PeriodicalId":202897,"journal":{"name":"Southern Journal of Canadian Studies","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126950231","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"Not of the Nation\": Canadian History Textbooks and the Impossibility of an African-Canadian Identity","authors":"C. Poole","doi":"10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.290","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.290","url":null,"abstract":"The historical experience of blacks in Canada has continued to be one of partial remembrance and recognition set against a highly developed and dominant Anglo portrayal of Canadian history. This partiality has greatly limited the development of identity for Canadian blacks due to general non-recognition of them on the part of the white Canadian majority. Historiographically, the historical presence of blacks in Canada has been constructed as distinctly provisional. This study will illustrate the historical exclusion of black Canadians from the Canadian historical narrative by examining pre-Confederation Canadian black history as it appeared in thirty-two intermediate level (grades 7-10) textbooks authorized for use in Ontario between 1950 and 1985. These textbooks were evaluated based on their coverage of slavery in Canada, the Loyalist migration, the War of 1812, the Rebellions of 1837, and the Underground Railroad. These events are helpful in this assessment because they exist at the intersection of noteworthy events in Canadian history and significant moments in the history of black migration and black contribution to the nation. By uncovering these omissions, this study will also discuss the extent to which \"black Canadian-ness\" was constructed within these texts as a contradiction in terms. Informed by anti-racist pedagogy concerning the hegemonic effects of curricula on racial identity formation, it will focus on where such exclusions affected the process of identity formation of Canadian blacks and how it contributed to the alienation of black children's sense of belonging to the Canadian nation, curtailing the development of an identifiably black and Canadian identity for indigenous black.","PeriodicalId":202897,"journal":{"name":"Southern Journal of Canadian Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125985189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Constructing Black Canada","authors":"C. Crawford, K. Flynn, Amoaba Gooden","doi":"10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.286","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22215/sjcs.v5i1.286","url":null,"abstract":"Black Canadian artists and scholars challenge racist and nationalist discourses of Canadian nationhood and citizenship that place First Nations people, people of African descent and other people of colour who are born in Canada and can claim Canadian nationality based on birth, as outsiders. By contesting the 'master narrative' of Canadian nationhood and by interrogating blackness within Canada, these artists and scholars claim \"African Canada\" as a convergence of multiple African diasporic voices, coming from different ethno, cultural, linguistic and national spaces, but together articulating a deliberately transgressive Canadianness.","PeriodicalId":202897,"journal":{"name":"Southern Journal of Canadian Studies","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124867401","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}