"A Different Economy": Postcolonial Clearings in David Chariandy's Brother

This article explores the tyranny of race and space as well as intrinsic rather than instrumental value in David Chariandy’s Brother (2017). Borrowing from the theories of critical race scholars including Rinaldo Walcott, Idil Abdillahi and Frantz Fanon, the paper argues for an economy privileging the value of human bonds over money. A response to dominant Canadian discourses which position Black men as criminals, Chariandy’s novel places a positive value on Black masculinities and communities haunted by law enforcement in their homes and small businesses. Deemed both “known to police” and a “problem,” the characters in Brother find refuge in what I call postcolonial clearings, which take the form of barbershops, hidden valleys, music and other characters. The article begins with the premise that Canada is colonized territory for Black people treated as second-class citizens. In the context of the Black Lives Matter movement, the paper underscores the deaths of two Black men in the Toronto of the mid-1990s. Chariandy not only breathes life into Black men rendered nameless and faceless by powers-that-be, he also questions the central ideals and pillars of the Canadian nation-state

Whips, Hammers, and Ropes: The Burden of Race and Desire in Clarke’s George & Rue

George Elliott Clarke's historical novel George & Rue (2005) recreates the murder of a white New Brunswick cabdriver by two black men, George and Rufus Hamilton, who were Clarke's cousins. An application of postcolonial theories of violence, as elaborated by such thinkers as Frantz Fanon, and, more specifically, a critical stance engaged with the black Atlantic experience, reveals how Clarke's novel blurs the line between perpetrator and victim within the context of Canadian racism in the first half of the twentieth century. George and Rue's physical and spiritual hunger evokes desires for the white world that oppresses them, and their execution exposes the scales of justice that are never tipped in their favour