2008-2009 Aim and Scope of the Course:
This course examines a selection of black women’s writing from four geographic locations in the African Diaspora: the Caribbean, United States, Canada and Britain. It offers a critical engagement of the dialogue that Caribbean, African American, black Canadian and black British literatures open up across academic disciplines and cultural and national boundaries. By first locating black women’s texts within their specific geographical and cultural contexts, the course explores the potential of African Diaspora literatures to engage personal explorations of self, identity and belonging as part of wider socio-historical and cultural discussions about black women’s lives. But by further understanding that black women’s lives intersect across multiple borders—geographical, historical, racial, cultural and sexual—the course also allows for the reading of these texts as part of a shared diasporic literary tradition that recognizes not only points of difference, but also crucial points of thematic and structural convergence. The course attempts to read these texts, then, as part of a historical and literary continuum within the African Diaspora, across which women meet in coalition and partnership.

This term the course examines the work of nine black women writers: one writing from within the Caribbean (Erna Brodber); three writing from Canada (Dionne Brand, Nalo Hopkinson and Marlene Nourbese Philip); three from the United States (Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison and Edwidge Danticat); and two from England (Joan Riley and Andrea Levy). All the writers selected, expect Morrison and Hurston, were either born in the Caribbean or are of Caribbean descent. And while Hurston was born in the US south, she did much of her anthropological research in the Caribbean. In many ways, then, the Caribbean provides the critical lens through which the course will be initially approached. By approaching the course from a place of triple displacement occasioned by the intersections of migration, racism and sexism, the course allows us to further problematize questions of diaspora, language and belonging. What happens, for example, when a writer, like Edwidge Danticat, writes in English about Haiti from the United States? What happens also when Nalo Hopkinson inscribes a forbidden cultural landscape on to the heart of Toronto, Canada? And can Erna Brodber engage a diaspora consciousness from her small rural village of Woodside in St. Mary, Jamaica?

Beginning with a discussion of slavery in Morrison’s Beloved and ending with Nalo Hopkinson’s futuristic novel, Brown Girl in the Ring, the course is guided more by thematic and structural concerns than by geography. The course is faithful to Vèvè Clark’s notion of diaspora literacy and insists that these women’s texts be approached “from an informed, indigenous perspective.” The course, thus, first places these texts within their appropriate historical, social and political contexts. Taught from an interdisciplinary perspective, fictional texts are read alongside readings in literary theory, feminist theory, cultural studies and diaspora studies.

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Format:
The course comprises one three-hour seminar over 13 weeks in the fall term.

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Required Primary Readings:

Brand, Dionne. A Map to the Door of No Return, Toronto, Vintage Canada, 2001
Brand, Dionne. At the Full and Change of the Moon, Toronto, Vintage Canada, 1999
Brodber, Erna. Jane and Louisa will Soon Come Home, London: New Beacon Books, 1980 Danticat, Edwidge. Breath, Eyes, Memory, New York: Vintage Books, 1994
Hopkinson, Nalo. Brown Girl in the Ring, New York: Warner Books, 1998
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God, New York: Harper Perennial, 2006 (1937)
Levy, Andrea. Small Island, London: Review, 2004
Morrison, Toni. Beloved, New York: Vintage Books, 2004
Philip, M. Nourbese. She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks, Charlottetown: Ragweed
            Press, 1989
Riley, Joan. The Unbelonging, London: Women’s Press Limited, 1985

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Required Online Readings:

Francis, Donette A. “‘Silences Too Horrific to Disturb’: Writing Sexual Histories in Edwidge           Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory.” Research in African Literatures 35:2 (Summer 2004) 75-90

Fumagalli, Maria Cristina. “‘The Smallest Cell Remembers’: She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence
Softly Breaks and Marlene Nourbese Philip’s Journey Back to Africa,” EnterText: An Interactive Interdisciplinary E-Journal for Cultural and Historical Studies and CreativeWork 3:2 (Fall 2003) 162-79

Goldman, Marlene, “Mapping the Door of No Return: Deterritorialization and the Work of Dionne Brand,” Canadian Literature vol. 182 (2004) 13-28

Gunning, Dave. “Anti-Racism, the Nation-State and Contemporary Black British Literature,”         Journal of Commonwealth Literature 39:2 (June 2004) 29-43

Reid, Michelle. “Crossing the Boundaries of the ‘Burn’: Canadian Multiculturalism and Caribbean Hybridity in Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring,” Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy 46:3 (Fall 2005) 297-314

Walcott, Rinaldo and Leslie Sanders. “At the Full and Change of CanLit: An Interview with            Dionne Brand.” Canadian Woman Studies 20:2 (2000) 22-26

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Other Required Reading

Adell, Sandra.  Double-Consciousness/Double Bind: Theoretical Issues in Twentieth-Century          Black Literature.  Urbana and Chicago: U of Illinois Press, 1994. 90-117.

Brodber, Erna.  "Fiction in the Scientific Procedure."  Caribbean Women Writers: Essays from the First International Conference. Ed. Selwyn Cudjoe. Wellesley: Calaloux Publications, 1990. 164-168.

Clark, Vèvè A. “Developing Diaspora Literacy and Marasa Consciousness.”  Comparative             American Identities: Race, Sex, and Nationality in the Modern Text. Ed. Hortense J. Spillers. New York: Routledge, 1991. 40-61.

Clifford, James.  “Diasporas.” Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century.         Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997. 244-278.

Dance, Daryl Cumber. “Who Was Cock Robin? A New Reading of Erna Brodber’s Jane and Louisa        Will Soon Come Home.” CLA Journal 50:1 (Sept 2006) 20-36.

Davies, Carole Boyce and Elaine Savory Fido, ed.  "Women and Literature in the Caribbean: An Overview." Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Literature. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1990. 1-22.

Henderson, Mae G. “Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Re-Membering the Body as Historical Text.”          Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex, and Nationality in the Modern Text. Ed.Hortense J. Spillers. New York: Routledge, 1991. 62-86.

Henderson, Mae Gwendolyn.  “Speaking in Tongues: Dialogics, Dialectics, and the Black Woman         Writer’s Literary Tradition.” Changing our own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women.  Ed. Cheryl A. Wall.  New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1989. 16-37.

Jacobs, Karen. “From ‘Spy-glass’ to ‘Horizon’: Tracking the Anthropological Gaze in Zora Neale    Hurston.”  Postcolonial Perspectives on Women Writers from Africa, the Caribbean, and the U.S. Ed. Martin Japtok.  Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2003.  23-68.

Lima, Maria Helena. “‘Pivoting the Centre’: The Fiction of Andrea Levy.” Write Black, Write            British: From Post Colonial to Black British Literature. Ed. Kadija Sesay. Hertford, England: Hansib, 2005. 56-85.

Naylor, Gloria.  “A Conversation: Gloria Naylor and Toni Morrison.” Conversations with Toni
Morrison. Ed. Danille Taylor-Guthrie. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1994. 188-217.

Philip, Marlene NourbeSe. “Managing the Unmanageable.” Caribbean Women Writers: Essays From the First International Conference. Ed. Selwyn R. Cudjoe. Wellesley, Massachusetts: Calaloux Publications, 1990. 294-300

Suárez, Isabel Carrera. “Absent Mother(Land)s: Joan Riley’s Fiction.” Motherlands: Black         Women’s Writing from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia. Ed. Susheila Nasta. New           Brunswick: Rutgers UP,1992. 290-309.

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Recommended Reading:

Bannerjee, Himani. The Dark Side of the Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism, Nationalism and
Gender. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2000.

Brodber, Erna.  The Continent of Black Consciousness. London: New Beacon Books, 2003.

Chariandy, David. “ ‘Canada in Us Now’: Locating the Criticism of Black Canadian Writing.”
Essays on Canadian Writing 74: 196-216, 2002.

Christian, Barbara. “The Highs and Lows of Black Feminist Criticism.”  Reading Black,
Reading Feminist. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Meridian, 1990. 44-51.

Clarke, George Elliott. Eyeing the North Star: Directions in African-Canadian Literature.  Toronto:           McClelland and Stewart, 1997.

---. Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature.  Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. 
Clifford, James.  Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge:           Harvard UP, 1997.

Collins, Patricia Hill.  Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of        Empowerment.  New York: Routledge, 2000.

Davies, Carole Boyce. Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject. London:      Routledge, 1994.

Davies, Carole Boyce and Elaine Savory Fido.  Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and            
Literature.  Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1990.

Dawson, Ashley. Mongrel Nation: Diasporic Culture and the Making of Postcolonial Britain. Ann  Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness.  Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Glissant, Edouard.  Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1989.

Godard, Barbara. 1996. “Writing Resistance: Black Women’s Writing in Canada.”
Intersexions: Issues of Race and Gender in Canadian Women’s Writing. Ed. Coomi S. Vevaina and Barbara Godard. 106-115. New Delhi: Creative Books, 1996. 106-115.

Hall, Stuart. “Negotiating Caribbean Identities.”  New Left Review 209 (1995) 3-14.

---. “New Ethnicities.” Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. Ed. David Morley and Kuan Hsing Chen. London: Routledge, 1996. 441-49.

James, Joy and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, ed.  The Black Feminist Reader.  Oxford: Blackwell  Publishers, 2000.

James, Winston. Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain. London: Verso, 1993. 231-
281.

McKittrick, Katherine. Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle.
Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

McLeod, John. Postcolonial London: Rewriting the Metropolis. London: Routledge, 2004.

Mercer, Kobena. Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies. London:            Routledge, 1994.

Sandhu, Sukhdev. London Calling: How Black and Asian Writers Imagined a City. London: Harper
Collins, 2003.

Sesay, Kadija, ed.  Write Black, Write British: From Postcolonial to Black British Literature.
Hertford: Hansib, 2005.

Stein, Mark. Black British Literature: Novels of Transformation. Columbus: Ohio State
University Press, 2004.

 Walcott, Rinaldo. Black Like Who? Writing Black Canada. Toronto: Insomniac, 1997.

---. “The Desire to Belong: The Politics of Texts and Their Politics of Nation.” Floating the
Borders: New Contexts in Canadian Criticism. Ed. Nurjehan Aziz. Toronto: TSAR, 1999. 61-79.

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Important Note on Readings:

In the course outline that follows, for each week (except September 12 and October 31), I’ve assigned a primary reading and one or two secondary readings. The secondary readings, which are listed as required readings above, are to help you contextualize the novels and poetry, and give you a perspective from which to begin to position your own critical assessment of the women’s texts. Each week, we will engage a discussion both of the fiction and the secondary sources, including interviews, which I have assigned. Your reading in the course, however, should not be limited to these suggestions. While I have also included a list of recommended readings to help you map out the wider framework of the course, it is my expectation that your own research will take you well beyond the preliminary suggestions I have offered.

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COURSE OUTLINE

Black Women’s Writing in the African Diaspora

September 5
Introduction to the Course
Discussion of aims, methods, scope, evaluation, etc

September 12
Theorizing Black Women’s Writing in the Diaspora
Reading: Carole Boyce Davies and Elaine Savory Fido, “Women and Literature in the Caribbean:
An Overview”
Reading:  Sandra Adell, Double-Consciousness/Double Bind: Theoretical Issues in Twentieth-Century Black Literature (90-117)
Reading: Mae Gwendolyn Henderson, “Speaking in Tongues: Dialogics, Dialectics, and the Black Woman Writer’s Literary Tradition” (16-24)
Reading: Vèvè A.Clark, “Developing Diaspora Literacy and Marasa Consciousness” (40-46)

September 19
Slavery as Black Women’s Trauma

Presenter: Debra Veira
Reading: Toni Morrison, Beloved
Reading: Gloria Naylor, “A Conversation: Gloria Naylor and Toni Morrison”
Reading: Mae G. Henderson, “Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Re-Membering the Body as Historical Text”

September 26
Slavery and Black Women’s Counter-Narrative

Presenter: naila keleta mae
Reading: Dionne Brand, At the Full and Change of the Moon
Reading (available on-line): Rinaldo Walcott and Leslie Sanders, “At the Full and Change of CanLit: An Interview with Dionne Brand,” Canadian Woman Studies 20:2 (2000) 22-26

October 3
Theorizing Diaspora as (an)other Trauma

Presenter: Carla Ionescu
Reading: Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return
Reading (available on-line): Marlene Goldman, “Mapping the Door of No Return: Deterritorialization and the Work of Dionne Brand,” Canadian Literature vol. 182 (2004) 13-28
Reading: James Clifford, “Diasporas,” Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, 244-278

October 10
Disrupting Engendered Boundaries

Presenter: Reva Marin
Reading: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Reading: Karen Jacobs, “From ‘Spy-glass’ to ‘Horizon’: Tracking the Anthropological Gaze in Zora Neale Hurston”

October 17
(Post)Colonial Subjectivities

Presenter: Susan Sutherland
Reading: Andrea Levy, Small Island
Reading: (available on-line): Dave Gunning, “Anti-Racism, the Nation-State and Contemporary Black British Literature,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 39:2 (June 2004) 29-43
Reading: Maria Helena Lima, “‘Pivoting the Centre’: The Fiction of Andrea Levy”

October 24
Understanding the Trope of the Kumbla

Presenter: Donya Tag-El-Din
Reading: Erna Brodber, Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home
Reading:"Fiction in the Scientific Procedure" 
Reading:  Daryl Cumber Dance, “Who Was Cock Robin? A New Reading of Erna Brodber’s Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home,” CLA Journal 50:1 (Sept 2006) 20-36

October 31                  Proposal and Bibliography due today (15%)
Guest Lecture by Erna Brodber

(This lecture is cancelled and students will use this as a reading week)

November 7

Sexual Trauma as Critique of the Nation I
Reading: Joan Riley, The Unbelonging
Reading: Isabel Carrera Suárez, “Absent Mother(Land)s: Joan Riley’s Fiction”

(Students will participate this week in the CERLAC graduate students' conference and respond to course's assigned readings in a response paper due on November 21)

November 14

Sexual Trauma as Critique of the Nation II

Presenter: Christina Rousseau
Reading: Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory
Reading (available on-line): Donette A Francis, “‘Silences Too Horrific to Disturb’: Writing Sexual Histories in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory,” Research in African Literatures 35:2 (Summer 2004) 75-90

November 21               Response Paper due today (5%)
The Question of Language

Presenter: Tanita Muneshwar
Reading: M. Nourbese Philip, She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks
Reading: Marlene NourbeSe Philip. “Managing the Unmanageable”
Reading (available on-line): Maria Cristina Fumagalli, “‘The Smallest Cell Remembers’: She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks and Marlene Nourbese Philip’s Journey Back to Africa,” EnterText: An Interactive Interdisciplinary E-Journal for Cultural and Historical Studies and Creative Work 3:2 (Fall 2003)  162-79

November 28
Healing Across Borders

Presenter: Arlene Jardine
Reading: Nalo Hopkinson, Brown Girl in the Ring
Reading (available on-line): Michelle Reid, “Crossing the Boundaries of the ‘Burn’: Canadian Multiculturalism and Caribbean Hybridity in Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring,” Extrapolation:  Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy 46:3 (Fall 2005) 297-314

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Leadership of seminar session (25%)                                                                   
This involves analysis of assigned texts in one seminar week with questions to guide discussion. You will hand in a written copy of your discussion plan including questions on the same day.
     
Research paper proposal including a bibliography (15%)
The proposal will be a single type-written, double-spaced page indicating the aim and scope of the research. The bibliography will list main entries, with a sentence or two indicating the specific relevance of each source to the proposed research topic.

Research Essay (20-25 pages) 40%
The research essay will be an original critical analysis of the work of one of the nine authors discussed in the course. You may also choose to do a comparative study of two authors. You may approach the analysis from any perspective you choose, incorporating themes, discussion and methodology used in the course, as well as my feedback to the earlier proposal.

Response Paper (5%)
Each student will prepare a three-page written response to the readings assigned for November 14. We will not meet as a class on November 14, as I will be attending a conference.

Informed participation (15%)
Your participation requires weekly, prepared attendance; that is, contribution to the discussion through informed questions and responses.

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