Reviews for Black Canadians

The average rating for Black Canadians based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-11-03 00:00:00 Gary Scotts "My father's relatives sometimes said, 'The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice'. But my father bombed the pious saying to smithereens with his own sarcastic version:'The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice-but if you get too black, it ain't no use'. He turned self-affirmation on its head with this bittersweet reminder of the hopelessness of being black in a society that doesn't love-or even like-black people." Lawrence Hill begins this book with personal stories about how his black father and white mother met and married, and what it was like for him growing up in an otherwise entirely white Toronto suburb. But Hill looks beyond the personal, sharing his coast-to-coast interviews with Canadians of black and white parentage, delving into provocative and fascinating subjects. Courageous , sensitive and often humorous, Black Berry, Sweet Juice will enrich the way Canadians discuss matters of race and racial identity. "Through sincere feeling, a generous attitude, strong narrative and well-crafted prose-some really superb writing-Hill convinced Canadians that race is a topic we can tackle." -THE GAZETTE (Montreal) "Full of pointed, poignant and powerful observations." - The Globe and Mail "This sophisticated and exquisite description of the identity struggles faced by mixed-race people from coast to coast is a must-read. Fascinating, provocative, gripping." -CONSTANCE BACKHOUSE, author of Colour-Coded:A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900-1950 Reading this book was akin to having a conversation with Lawrence Hill, who was (and remains) one of my favourite Canadian authors. I highly recommend this well written book. 5 stars

Review # 2 was written on 2013-08-08 00:00:00 Jewelrit Stewart Race is never a really straightforward issue, especially if you've grown up in Canada. It sometimes seems like this country does everything it can to not talk about race. How many times have you heard the words "I don't see color" from the people around you? That's nice...if race doesn't matter to you. But it does matter. And it matters to a lot of people. Especially when how well we are treated in society is in direct correlation with the melanin in our skin. But this is where it gets really complicated. How does race affect one when your parents are from different races? What if you are both black and white? How do you construct your racial identity then? Are you black? Or depending the lightness of your skin, are you white? Then again, you might be neither and just "mixed"? These are questions that Lawrence Hill attempts to answer in his novel "Black Berry, Sweet Juice". Hill examines the issue of being mixed race person living in Canada, and what role racial issues have in constructing an individual's identity. I liked that Hill included stories from his own family's history to illustrate the complexities of being mixed. Hill's parents were involved in an interracial relationship during a time in U.S history in which blacks and whites couldn't even eat at the same restaurant together. They fled to Canada to start a family without the racism of their home country.These stories added something personal to a topic that is already interesting enough. There is an abundance of books on racism in the United States, but not a lot in regards to its neighbor to the north.