Biography & Autobiography / Cultural, Ethnic & Regional / African American & Black
Price
$36.00
In Salvage: Readings from the Wreck, Dionne Brand's first major book of non-fiction since her classic A Map to the Door of No Return, the acclaimed poet and novelist offers a bracing look at the intersections of reading and life, and of what remains in the wreck of empire. Blending literary crticism and autobiography-as artifact, Brand reads Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, among other still-widely studied works, to explore encounters with colonial, imperialist and racist tropes from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century—tropes that continue in new forms today. Brand vividly shows how contemporary practices of reading and writing are shaped by the narrative structures of these and related works; and explores how, in the face of this, one writes a narrative of Black life that attends to its own consciousness and expression. With the power and eloquence of a great poet coupled with the rigour of a deep and subtle thinker, Brand reveals how she learned to read the literature of two empires, British and American, in an anti-colonial light—in order to survive, and in order to live. This is the library, the wreck, and the potential for salvage she offers us now, in a brilliant, groundbreaking and essential work.
DIONNE BRAND is the award-winning author of twenty-three books of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Her twelve books of poetry include Land to Light On; thirsty; Inventory; Ossuaries; The Blue Clerk: Ars Poetica in 59 Versos; and Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems. Her six works of fiction include At the Full and Change of the Moon; What We All Long For; Love Enough; and Theory. Her nonfiction work includes Bread Out of Stone and A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging. Brand is the recipient of numerous literary prizes, among them the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Toronto Book Award, the Trillium Book Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize, and the 2021 Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction. She is the Editorial Director of Alchemy, an imprint of Knopf Canada, and University Professor Emerita at the University of Guelph. She lives in Toronto, Canada.
"Scintillating. . . . Brand’s piercing analysis is at once sweeping and deeply personal, shedding light on how English literature whitewashed imperial conquests one reader at a time. It’s a potent reevaluation of the British literary canon." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Award-winning novelist Brand, Toronto's former poet laureate, melds autobiography and literary criticism to offer a shrewd, intimate reading of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century novels that shaped her sense of self. . . . Penetrating cultural criticism." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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