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Canada’s Black literary gap


Austin Clarke’s death is making me think about Black writers in Canada, specifically how few have made a major impression on the country’s literary mainstream and what a huge gap his passing has left.

The fact that I can count those influential writers on fewer than the fingers on two hands makes me wonder. Is it my ignorance? Is it because Black writers aren’t supported by the industry? A conversation with some leading figures on the scene suggests that it’s a bit of both.

Rinaldo Walcott, director of the Women & Gender Studies Institute at U of T, says how we define Canadian stories explains Black writers’ lesser place on the literary landscape.

“Austin came from a colonized place that was about to become a place of independence to a place that was still colonial in 1955,” he says just days after Clarke, one of his best friends, died. “He was one of the first to begin to internalize the city as the place where Canadian culture was about to happen.

“But Canadians don’t have the critical skills to make sense of these stories. The problem is that Black stories are not seen as Canadian stories.”

Itah Sadu, co-owner of the bookstore A Different Booklist, agrees that our definitions of Canadian stories can be problematic. “Austin doesn’t represent African-Canadian literature he represents Canadian literature,” she says.

But he’s seldom seen that way.

She sardonically suggests that it’s almost as if there isn’t room in this country for more than two Black writers.

“I’d go to literary events, and there’d be Austin and Dionne [Brand]. And at another there was George [Elliott Clarke] and Lawrence [Hill]. But you almost never saw them all together.”

National poet laureate George Elliott Clarke says there’s no shortage of Blacks who have written in Canada through the decades. 

“I compiled a comprehensive bibliography of African-Canadian authors from 1785 to 2002, numbering in the hundreds. But they don’t get enough attention. Despite being Canada’s national poet laureate, my two latest poetry books have not been reviewed anywhere.”

Sadu says a big problem is that the publishing industry itself has trouble seeing Black stories as authentically Canadian.

“Publishers still don’t believe that the stories of Black people will translate to Charlottetown. Like George says, there are multiple Black people writing in Canada. They just can’t break through that Black ceiling. Often I’ll talk to publishing reps to recommend a manuscript I’ve seen.

“Usually I don’t hear back from them, but sometimes I do. And they’ll say, ‘The work is good, but I’m crunching the bottom line.’ That means they’re worried whether the appeal of the book will be wide enough to reach the East Coast.”

George Elliott Clarke says there were specific reasons why Austin Clarke broke through.

“He was always there at the centre of racial concerns and was publishing as much non-fiction journalism as he was fiction. This meant that he was steadily in the public eye, much like other 1960s-era commentators on aspects of social policy.”

Austin Clarke got it right in other ways, too, says Sadu.

“He kicked down the doors and he wanted to shake up the publishing world. I remember going with him to the Arts and Letters Club – he came there with The Polished Hoe – and he was talking to people about how he’d applied to become a member but was turned down. And then he told them that, when they finally let him in, his membership cheque bounced. He just laughed. But he was like that.”

But she cautions against saying that Clarke’s death has left a vacuum.

He wrote so that Hill could give us The Book Of Negroes and so George Elliott Clarke could go on to become national poet laureate.

Saying he’s left a vacuum suggests that history comes to a point and then stops.

“The Black Defence Group of the 70s and Dudley Laws? You can see them now in Black Lives Matter.”

susanc@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole

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