Black History Month: Fiction Highlight 1 February 5, 2019 – Posted in: Highlights – Tags: Black History Month, Fiction

Black History Month is a time to celebrate the important achievements made by African Americans throughout history. Over the years, Black Canadians have contributed immensely to literature, whether it be in the prose or verse form. Here is a look into the great African Canadian writers we have published, and the importance of their words.

Dancing in the Dust by Kagiso Lesego Molope is a moving story of growing up in a fearful, oppressive society, where the only comfort for the young is dream and romance, and the only free option that of rebellion.

These gracefully understated stories, set during and post apartheid, depict the lives of South African black women. But their calm surface is illusive, violence lurks just beneath the surface.

 WINNER – 2018 Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation Edem Awumey gives us a darkly moving and terrifying novel about fear and play, repression and protest, and the indomitable nature of creativity.

Five women gather every Friday night to discuss their writing lives. Isabel, returning home, where the writing circle are to meet, is attacked in her car at gunpoint and raped. But she manages to turn the gun on her attacker and shoot him. In coping with thekilling, the disposal of the body, and the breakdown and recovery of Isabel, we learn about the intersecting personal lives of the women–Isabel, Carmen, Jazz, Beauty, and Amina, all successful professionals in today’s South Africa.

Told in lucid, poetic prose, this is a gripping story about the first meeting of a people with their colonizer.