In a mix of short fiction, poetry, dub poetry, and hip hop, some of Black Canada’s foremost writers from across generations explore history, community, love, and healing. The collection consists of writing from Catherine Bain, George Elliott Clarke, Gayle Gonsalves, Joanne C. Hillhouse, Clifton Joseph, Dwayne Morgan, Motion, Jelani Nias (J-Wyze), Djanet Sears, Mansa Trotman, and the editor, Althea Prince.

In the Black: New African Canadian Literature

Literature & Fiction

Prince, Althea

United States

Insomniac Press

Beyond the Journey features the voices of women who have experienced the challenge of living in Canada’s immigrant communities. Some women were brought to Canada as children, while others immigrated as adults; yet others were born in Canada to immigrant parents. The women chronicle their journey of settlement in Canada through life-writing, poetry, and essays. In all instances, they focused on reaching for a sense of belonging in Canada as they engaged in community building. This required transcending their “immigrantness” to create that new reality. While the end result is gratifying, the journey required adapting to the culture shock, alienation, and loss of identity that are inevitably part of the immigrant’s experience.

Beyond the Journey: Women’s Stories of Settlement and Community Building in Canada

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

The Black Notes: Fresh Writing by Black Women and Girls

Like Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy, Althea Prince's new novel beautifully traces a woman's struggle to negotiate the transition from life in the Caribbean to life in the concrete utopia of urban North America. Sayshelle, her mother Reevah and her aunts Sage and Juniper Berry stand at the centre of this breathtaking new novel. Loving This Man is about Antigua, about politics and class, but more than anything, about the mother-daughter bond that exists in these women's lives. The Antiguan section of the novel describes Reevah's relationship with her husband Emmanuel, whose fiery political beliefs are silenced by a tragic early death; Sage's failed relationships with Rogain and Rommel, men who use and control her, to the point where she allows her daughters to suffer; and Juniper Berry, headstrong and forthright, who divorces her first husband and stakes her claim on Clifford, a man she senses she has known in a previous life. In the novel's second section, Sayshelle has moved to Canada, where she makes a life for herself against the background of historical forces such as the Black Power movement, the feminist revolution and the Vietnam War. Sensuous, specific in its evocation of Toronto and Antigua, Prince's novel is a must for anyone who follows Black Canadian, Caribbean and Post-colonial literatures.

Loving This Man

Literary

Idiomatic

Dr. Althea Prince follows up her earlier collection of essays (Being Black) on Black cultural life with this important new collection. This book sensitively charts Black women's journeys with their hair: how it is perceived, judged, and graded on the yardstick of mainstream society's standards of beauty. Relying on the tradition of the personal essay, and conversations with several Black women, Prince delves into "the politics of Black women's hair," specifically examining the impact on the emotional lives of Black girls and women. Incorporating her own voice as a mother and a sociologist, and memories of her own childhood experiences with her hair, Prince provides an understanding of how some Black women use rituals surrounding hair to create positive bonds with their daughters. She suggests that something beautiful can be nourished in the realm of Spirit between a woman and her daughter when they sit in quiet to attend to hair combing and hair grooming. Including interviews with women from Canada, the Caribbean, England, the United States of America, and South America, Dr. Prince brings an international perspective to this very personal subject.

The Politics of Black Women's Hair

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Beauty, Grooming, & Style

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Books by Prince, Althea