Caribbean-Canadian In Us Now
Call for Papers
A Special Issue of The Journal of West Indian Literature

The Journal of West Indian Literature is planning a special issue on
Caribbean-Canadian literary production. Guest editors Michael Bucknor
(University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica) and Daniel Coleman
(McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario) invite papers from a wide
variety of regions, methods, and perspectives on the general topic of
literary production between the Caribbean and Canada. In the
immigration-oriented era of the 1970s, an early anthology of ?Black?
writing in Canada was published under the title, ?Canada In Us Now.?
 The title emphasized not only the presence of Caribbean writers of
various descent in Canada, but also the permeation of Canadianness into
the writings of Caribbean-born people. By the 1980s, Guyanese-Canadian
Cyril Dabydeen was bearing witness in his anthology, A Shapely Fire, to
the intercultural exchanges taking place between Canada and the
Caribbean. Since then, the increasing movement back and forth between
the Caribbean islands and Canada, as well as with other places such as
the Unites States and Europe since the 1970s and 1980s, has meant that
the confluence of Caribbean and Canadian writings has disseminated
widely. The Caribbean-Canadian is, indeed, in many of ?us? now,
whoever and wherever ?we? are located?in the islands, in Canada,
between these places and the Unites States, Europe, or Central and
South America.

The literary production of Caribbean-Canadian is ?in? us in many and
diverse ways: in the fictional diasporic worlds created by renowned
novelists such as Dionne Brand, Austin Clarke, Neil Bissoondath, John
Hearne, or Sam Selvon; in the creolized genres of dub poetry and yard
theatre; in theoretical meditations on diasporic experience, carnival
body awareness, and linguistic migration (Dionne Brand, Olive Senior,
Marlene NourbeSe Philip, and Ted Chamberlain); in musical forms such as
hip hop, reggae, dance hall, and steel pan that influence the poetic
rhythms of Lillian Allen, Klyde Broox, or Clifton Joseph; in the
inter-ethnic, cross-racial, trans-national positionings that combine
and confront the histories of French, British, and Spanish colonialism,
British-Canadian marine commerce in the West Indies, slavery,
indenture, and commercial or labour migration. Caribbean-Canadian
literary production rises out of the vibrancy and violation of this
complex cultural and political inheritance, and it remains politically
and aesthetically dynamic and experimental on all fronts.

The editors invite papers of 20 ? 25 double-spaced typed pages in
English and formatted to the MLA style guide. Two copies of each paper
should be sent by January 15, 2005, either in hard copy or by email, to
one of the addresses below:

Dr. Michael Bucknor
Department of Literatures in English
University of the West Indies
Mona, St. Andrew
Kingston, Jamaica
michael.bucknor_at_uwimona.edu.jm

Dr. Daniel Coleman
Department of English
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario
Canada L8S 4L9
dcoleman_at_mcmaster.ca

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Received on Sun Oct 24 2004 - 21:10:23 EDT