Fugitive Borders
Black Canadian Cross-Border Literature at Mid-Nineteenth Century
Author(s)
Sawallisch, Nele
Collection
Knowledge Unlatched (KU)Language
EnglishAbstract
Fugitive Borders explores a new archive of 19th-century autobiographical writing by black authors in North America. For that purpose, Nele Sawallisch examines four different texts written by formerly enslaved men in the 1850s that emerged in or around the historical region of Canada West (now known as Ontario) and that defy the genre conventions of the classic slave narrative. Instead, these texts demonstrate originality in expressing complex, often ambivalent attitudes towards the so-called Canadian Promised Land and contribute to a form of textual community-building across national borders. In the context of emerging national discourses before Canada's Confederation in 1867, they offer alternatives to the hegemonic narrative of the white settler nation.
Keywords
Black Canada; 19th Century; Slave Narrative; Life Writing; Borders; Literary History; Literature; America; Cultural History; American Studies; Migration; Literary StudiesDOI
10.14361/transcript.9783839445020ISBN
9783839445020, 9783837645026, 9783839445020Publisher
transcript VerlagPublisher website
https://www.transcript-verlag.de/Publication date and place
Bielefeld, 2018Imprint
transcript VerlagSeries
American Culture Studies, 13Classification
Literary studies: general
Social and cultural history
Migration, immigration and emigration
Relating to migrant groups / diaspora communities or peoples