We Have Historically Been "Rooted"in/Routed to this Place, and we are Here to Stay: Women's Voices in Black Canadian Literature

This paper attempts to (re)define the parameters of black Canadian literature by locating that literature both inside and outside of discussions about black literatures in the Americas. The paper argues that the social and historical conditions that framed African American and Caribbean literatures in the twentieth century are, is in many ways, quite distinct from the conditions out of which black Canadian literature emerged. The paper argues further that the works of black women writers in Canada offer, perhaps, the most critical tools in the reconceptualizing of a black Canadian literature through their articulation of (an)other kind of Canadianness that can account for both multiple black and multiple Canadian identities.