The Routledge Handbook of Black Canadian Literature

The Handbook of Black Canadian Literature offers a comprehensive overview of the growing and increasingly significant field of Black Canadian literary studies. Including historical and contemporary analysis, the volume is an essential text that maps the field over the almost 200 years of its existence across a range of genres from slave narratives to prose fiction, poetry, theatre, dub and spoken word. It presents Black Canadian literature as encompassing a diverse set of viewpoints, approaches and practices, as touching every aspect of Canadian territory and life, and as deeply influencing debates and understandings of Black peoples far beyond its borders. The handbook employs an interdisciplinary framework that incorporates literary, historical, geographical and cultural analysis. The book's 32 chapters are organized into five sections that chart the literature's development into a recognizable canon, trace Black literary geographies across Canada from east to west, delineate the literature's various genres and expressive forms, and honor the writers and thinkers who have influenced the growth of the field. The volume's range of subject and plurality of perspectives provide an excellent resource for teachers, researchers, and students from multiple disciplines, including Canadian studies and literature, Caribbean studies, global Black studies, hemispheric studies, diaspora studies, history, and cultural studies.