Black Like Who?: Writing Black Canada Book

In Black Like Who? Writing Black Canada, his 1997 collection of essays focussing on aspects of Black culture in Canada, Rinaldo Wincott, African-Canadian writer and academic, suggests that his readers "read the essays as an attempt to articulate some grammars for thinking Canadian blackness."

He goes on to expand on what he means by "writing blackness":

"Writing blackness after the civil-rights era, second wave feminism, black cultural nationalism, gay and lesbian liberation, the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill spectacle, the Rodney King beating and L.A. riots, the Yonge Street Riots, and the O.J. Simpson trials, is difficult work.Yet, writing blackness remains important work. Black postmodernity insists upon being chronicled as it makes fun of and spoofs the very notion of writing blackness. A certain kind of upheaval of blacknesses exists which makes apparent the senselessness of writing blackness even as we are compelled and forced to write it.

"In a Canadian context, writing blackness is a scary scenario: we are an absented presence always under erasure. Located between the U.S. and the Caribbean, Canadian blackness is a bubbling brew of desires for elsewhere, disappointments in the nation and the pleasures of exile' even for those who have resided here for many generations. The project of articulating Canadian blackness is difficult not because of the small number of us trying to take the tentative steps towards writing it, but rather because of the ways in which so many of us are nearly always pre-occupied with elsewhere and seldom with here. It seems then that a tempered arrogance might be a necessary element of any grammar that is used to construct a language for writing blackness in Canada. A shift in gaze can be an important moment.

"The writing of blackness in Canada, then, might begin with a belief that something important happens here. If we accept this, finally, then critics can move beyond mere celebration into the sustaining work that critique is. A belief that something important happens here would mean that celebration could become the site for investigating ourselves in critical ways. We can begin to refuse the seductions of firstness and engage in critique, dialogue and debate, which are always much more sustaining than celebrations of originality."

Thus, the act of discussing and critiquing black literature, music, film, art, becomes a declarative and profoundly political act - it announces that Black Canadian culture and art exist, that they are situated here, in and among other Canadian cultures, and that they are important, worth not just noting, but debating, being taken seriously. In writing these essays which deal with themes, aspects and artefacts of Black Canadian culture and history, Wincott asserts their value and importance and announces the necessity of acknowledging that these subjects are every bit as central to the Canadian cultural identity as the subjects written about by white critics. It is a revolutionary declaration.

The essays that follow cover a diverse range of subjects, from the complexity of Black Canadian culture in relation to African-American culture within the context of the Black diaspora, to the poetry of M. Nourbese Philips and Dione Brand to the films of Clement Virgo and Stephen Williams. With his essays, Wincott asserts the centrality of exploring blackness in the works of black Canadians, and the importance of this to Canadian culture as a whole. Black art is a part of Canadian art, and discussions of messages about blackness must be recognised as a legitimate topic in Canadian cultural criticism.