Black Canadian women must constantly incorporate changes to their identities to face the challenges of living in a multicultural society. Naturally Woman: The Search for Self in Black Canadian Women’s Literature examines the ways in which Black immigrant women must adapt to survive in a multicultural country such as Canada without losing their sense of self. The author examines the texts of five major modern/contemporary Canadian writers: Dionne Brand, Marlene Nourbese Philip, Tessa McWatt, Claire Harris, and Makeda Silvera, through prismatic criticism and by applying and extending a number of feminist discourses concerning Black women writing: identity, literary representations of female sojourn in Canada (as simultaneously aboveground and underground), feminist archetypal/myth criticism, and the discourse of mother/daughter/grandmother/substitute mother relationships. The book argues that there is a universal central myth on which the writings of these marginalized women are based and shows how some of the challenges of multiculturalism can be overcome, and how multiculturalism can become a site for creativity and innovation.
This groundbreaking book demonstrates how Black women writers in Canada retell the Demeter myth as ways of explaining the issues associated with change, migration, and individuation. The book claims these stories as neo-mythic narratives of African Diasporic epic journeys, and as part of the narrative of the wider Great Migration of Blacks in the Americas.
InannaWebmaster –
“In Naturally Woman Sharon Morgan Beckford nimbly explores the fiction and poetry of Canadian-Caribbean writers—Dionne Brand, Tessa McWatt, Claire Harris, Marlene NourbeSe Philip and Makeda Silvera. She shows how these disaporic stories, meld African, Caribbean and Amerindian tales with the European mythologies inherited from colonization to produce a spirited (and inspirited) literature. This is a book that deserves a wide readership. ”
—Pamela McCallum, Professor of English, University of Calgary
InannaWebmaster –
“Naturally Woman is a welcome and refreshing addition to Black Canadian Literary Studies. The book offers a brilliantly provocative revision of the Demeter/Persephone myth that locates black women writers of Caribbean descent as the unexpected avatars of a specifically Canadian literary tradition. By revealing the intersections between Western and African Caribbean mythologies and the ways these are reinterpreted in black women’s poetry and fiction, the book deepens our understanding of the complex relations at play in a culturally diverse Canada.”
—Andrea Davis, Deputy Director, CERLAC and Associate Professor, Humanities, York University