'"History is already seated in the chair in the empty room when one arrives.'"
In A Map to the Door of No Return, Dionne Brand acknowledges history's presence while filling the room with ruminations collected from the far corners of her memory. She plots personal and public history onto a map with layers of origin, place, belonging and identity. The book''s pages could be patchworks of newspaper clippings and ephemera held in place with yellowed scotch tape, so closely do they resemble a scrapbook of her life.
Brand’s Land To Light On (one of my favourite books of poetry) includes the lines “here is the history of the body” and elsewhere, “we stumble on the romance of origins.” I like to think of these lines as poem-seeds that were developed into prose, eventually becoming A Map to the Door of No Return.
Brand refers to 'a method of way-finding' which could be applied to the book as a whole. It is part freeform memoir, part op-ed. We follow the meandering path of her journey to find 'relief from the persistent trope of colonialism,' guided by sporadic signposts in the form of headings: "'Maps,"' "'Forgetting,"' "'Up Here,"' "'More Maps."'
The '"Door of No Return"' in the title is described as "'a site of belonging or unbelonging."' In the vignettes woven throughout this book, Brand explores her experiences of belonging and unbelonging in the diverse sites of her life. Lost luggage and other airport hassles, a stalled car in a rural winter, a primary school teacher''s insistence on calling her by a name that is not her own: all these scenarios are dissected with an eye and ear for seeking origins.
And yet, she claims to spurn the idea of origins. This seems to be a contradiction in a book that consists of poetic ramblings focused on origins: the looseness of origins for immigrants, the lack of origins in cities, the strong origins of ancestors. I am equally bewildered when she claims that belonging does not interest her.
As a Toronto resident, I appreciate the geographical references peppered throughout the book, pinning Brand''s history in the city to the Lakeshore during Caribana, Oakwood en route to Eglinton and the Allen Expressway, highrises at Kipling and Dixon, a parking lot at King and John, a young woman panhandling at Bathurst and College. For me, the familiar routes and intersections give life to Brand''s focus on the geography of colonization.
A Map to the Door of No Return works in conversation with other writers theorizing on settler colonialism and antiblackness. In The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism, Jodi Byrd explains her choice of a term to describe peoples who were brought to Turtle Island forcibly and enslaved. She settles on borrowing poet Kamau Braithwaite''s term '"arrivants,"' which some scholars take issue with. Brand contributes to the conversation in a deliberation over the terms taking and leaving, in reference to Black peoples being transported away from their land through the Door of No Return. "'Taking, taking too might suggest a benevolence, so, no, it was not taking.'" Brand''s reflections on the courthouse and going through airport customs connect with the work of Simone Browne, who explores Black women''s experiences in airports in Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness.
Brand''s writing is rich with passages that linger in your mind. Her interaction with three children playing outside on the island of St. Vincent is one of those. '"We arrive at the top, a baked village, houses along the road and some farther in on the sides of the hills; some hidden in the recesses of the volcano. Near the school, I meet the children.'" Brand contrasts their sense of place with her own, adding another layer to her map. '"They were from some place...This was where they lived and I, I lived in the air.'"
Descarga la app de Kindle gratuita y comienza a leer los libros para Kindle al instante en tu smartphone, tablet u ordenador. No necesitas un dispositivo Kindle. Más información
Lee al instante en tu navegador con Kindle Cloud Reader.
Con la cámara de tu teléfono móvil, escanea el siguiente código y descarga la app de Kindle.
![A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging (English Edition) de [Dionne Brand]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41oL1KJbStL._SY346_.jpg)
Sigue a los autores
Se ha producido un error. Prueba a realizar la solicitud de nuevo.
Outlet de Libros
Cientos de libros a precios reducidos. Ver más
Opiniones de clientes
Reseñas más importantes de otros países
Amazon Customer
Way-Finding Through Origins and Belongings
Revisado en Canadá 🇨🇦 el 7 de abril de 2016Amazon Customer
Her expertly crafted prose leads the reader to pause and re-read the beautiful passages that provide a window to her memories
Revisado en Canadá 🇨🇦 el 8 de abril de 2016Sallie Reynolds
A map to self-discovery and to discovery of the world
Revisado en los Estados Unidos 🇺🇸 el 22 de julio de 2020Josiah J. Mannion
Cornerstone book
Revisado en los Estados Unidos 🇺🇸 el 10 de agosto de 2022