233 p., The experiences of Black females have received little attention in Canadian research on education. As a result, little is known about how Black females experience schooling, and even less is known about the specific challenges they face on account of their gender and its interconnection with race, class, immigrant status and other aspects of their identity. In this dissertation, I examine the schooling experiences of a group of young, Black, females of Caribbean descent. Through the use of anti-racism feminism and immigrant integration theories, the author looks at the relationship between their experiences of school and their understanding of their identity. Argues that the young women's negotiation of schooling is intimately linked to their understanding of their identity - an understanding that is filtered through race and gendered lenses, and is a product of their status as Canadian children of immigrant, Caribbean parents, living in a multicultural society.
242 p., As a feminist approach which takes into consideration how gender collides with race, national origin, and class in the context of neo-colonial imperialisms, transnational feminist studies attempt to bridge the gap left by these theories that either look at gender or at race. This dissertation examines the work of Dionne Brand, Marlene Nourbese Philip, and Makeda Silvera in the light of these recent transnational feminist developments. By insisting on a fluid and multiply positioned self, these writers enact a transnational feminist identity that repudiates simplistic notions of gender oppression at the same time as it challenges masculinist notions of home.
108 p., Investigate how contemporary fiction written by mixed race North American authors challenges theories of cultural and racial fluidity. Specifically looks at the works of Lawrence Hill, Shani Mootoo, and Danzy Senna, because their work uses similar conditions of hybridity in identity, through the lens of cultural performance. These authors represent my politics of an inclusionary mixed race theory by representing differences amongst themselves that resolve into a focus on language, as it reflects on mixed race literature.
210 p., In African and Caribbean literature the question of power relations is omnipresent. It is identifiable in the literature of the independence period, which explored socio-cultural issues while African and Caribbean nations were emerging from the grip of colonial powers, and also in that of today, where developed countries and developing countries are still negotiating their relationship. While the Black woman is the first to feel the effects of power, because the latter is doubly marginalized as a woman and black, she has historically been silenced by a literary canon that does not leave her room for self-expression. Through an analysis of power relations between Black women and the patriarchal institution, we reveal the tactics that women use to endure the alienating systems in which they are located: (1) the rehabilitation of their sexuality (2) feminine solidarity (3) formal education (4) supernatural power and (5) the reexamination of Western values.
369 p., Looks at contemporary novels of the anglophone African diaspora through the lens of movement, migration, and dislocation, with particular attention to how the selected authors depict black diasporic identity formation, and how they contribute to it through their writings. Thematically, this dissertation examines literary representations of the social, cultural, and psychological consequences that involuntary and voluntary migrations have had for black communities and individuals in North America, the Caribbean, and Britain. It explores the juncture of history, memory, geography, and diasporic identity, as represented by eight contemporary novelists of African and African-Caribbean descent: Charles Johnson ( Middle Passage ), Lawrence Hill ( The Book of Negroes ), Toni Morrison (Sula and Tar Baby ), George Lamming (The Emigrants ), Caryl Phillips (The Final Passage, A State of Independence, and Crossing the River ), Andrea Levy (Small Island ), Cecil Foster (Sleep on, Beloved ), and Edwidge Danticat ( Breath, Eyes, Memory ).
