Abstract

Dionne Brand's prose explores the Black subjects' relation to place and space across both historical and spatial trajectories. Focusing on Brand's prose, the thesis draws on recent scholarship in the areas of literature and social geography to pursue questions of identity and identification and to examine the intersection of gendered and racialized subjectivities with place and space through the foci of language and history. Examinations of At the Full and Change of the Moon (1999), No Burden to Carry (1991), A Map to the Door of No Return (2001), and selected stories from Sans Souci and Other Stories (1988) investigate the implications of place and space in the retrieval and retelling of personal and collective histories. These texts explore how the Canadian present enables the creation of a history for Black subjects in Canada, one that is inflected by the other places and spaces of the Caribbean and Africa. As identities are developed, learned, and articulated through the language of a place, I consider In Another Place, Not Here (1997) and Bread Out of Stone (1994) to explore possibilities of exclusion and silencing, belonging and empowerment, and resistance, as expressed in and through language. Lastly, What We All Long For (2005) highlights a shift in Brand's representation of identities, places, and spaces, and my analysis considers the continuities and new approaches to Brand's depiction of the relation of identity to place and space.