Title: Black like who? : writing, Black, Canada /
Authors: Walcott, Rinaldo, 1965-
Publisher: Insomniac Press,
Year: 1997
Subjects: Black people Canada.; Black people Canada Race identity.; Arts, Black Canada.
Abstract: A study of black Canadian culture, Black Like Who? remaps the North American landscape. With hip-hop, film, literature, social unrest, sports, and the electronic media as his focus, Rinaldo Walcott not only outlines the role of black Canadians in building and defining Canada, he also demonstrates how Canadian blackness is conceived and lived out in ways that are both radically un-American and, ultimately, un-Canadian. Exploring everything from the lyrics and sampling of the Dream Warriors and Maestro Fresh-Wes to the writing of Dionne Brand, the tensions between sprinters Donovan Bailey and Michael Johnson, the Rodney King verdict, the popularity of the hood film, and the treatment of immigrant Somali communities, Black Like Who? is a compelling investigation into what it means to be both black and Canadian.
Contents: "Going to the north" : the limit of Black diasporic discourse(s) -- "A tough geography" : towards a poetics of Black space(s) in Canada -- The politics of the third cinema in Canada : reading the narrative of Clement Virgo's Rude -- "Keep on movin'" : rap, Black Atlantic identities and the problem of nation -- "No language is neutral" : the politics of performativity in M. Nourbese Philip's and Dionne Brand's poetry -- Black subjectivities : ethnicity, race and the politics of film in Canada -- Scattered speculations on Canadian Blackness, or, Grammar for Black.