“Writing is an act of desire, as is reading.”
As written in her dedication, this is a book for those who are adrift. It is for those who, at some point, were looking for something – for belonging, a place, a sense of self. It is a book for those who are her “fellow dwellers of the door.”
Dionne Brand’s A Map to the Door of No Return is a search. It is poetry. It is a negotiation – contradictory and unbound by time. As she traces a map to the Door of No Return, Brand charts a search for identity and belonging in the Black diaspora, taking readers on a passage through time and place, weaving in philosophy, poetry and politics. From Toronto to St. Lucia, Toni Morrison to Neruda, Brand traces a map to the Door of No Return that highlights the complexities of a diasporic relationship to land, identity and belonging.
“Having no name to call on was having no past; having no past pointed to the fissure between the past and the present. That fissure is represented in the Door of No Return: that place where our ancestors departed one world for another; the Old World for the New.”
The Door of No Return is not a physical door – rather, it is accessed through the mind and represents a place of forgetting and the forgotten. It is a rupture in history. It is the “door out of which Africans were captured, loaded onto ships heading for the New World” on a journey that required an urgent forgetting – a journey that laid the burden of trauma on the backs of the generations to follow.
As Brand negotiates this burden of trauma and forgetting, she whisks readers through a series of moments that are intricately woven together even as they are unrestricted by time and place. Her expertly crafted prose leads the reader to pause and re-read the beautiful passages that provide a window to her memories, her interactions, her confusion and disappointment. In a Map to the Door of No Return, Brand is a generous and passionate guide on an impossible journey toward belonging.
| PVP ed. digital: | EUR 16,21 |
| PVP ed. impresa: | EUR 17,21 |
| Precio Kindle: | EUR 11,35 Ahorra EUR 5,86 (34%) |
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A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging (English Edition) Versión Kindle
Edición en Inglés
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Dionne Brand
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Formato: Versión Kindle
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A Map to the Door of No Return is a timely book that explores the relevance and nature of identity and belonging in a culturally diverse and rapidly changing world. It is an insightful, sensitive and poetic book of discovery.
Drawing on cartography, travels, narratives of childhood in the Caribbean, journeys across the Canadian landscape, African ancestry, histories, politics, philosophies and literature, Dionne Brand sketches the shifting borders of home and nation, the connection to place in Canada and the world beyond.
The title, A Map to the Door of No Return, refers to both a place in imagination and a point in history—the Middle Passage. The quest for identity and place has profound meaning and resonance in an age of heterogenous identities.
In this exquisitely written and thought-provoking new work, Dionne Brand creates a map of her own art.
Drawing on cartography, travels, narratives of childhood in the Caribbean, journeys across the Canadian landscape, African ancestry, histories, politics, philosophies and literature, Dionne Brand sketches the shifting borders of home and nation, the connection to place in Canada and the world beyond.
The title, A Map to the Door of No Return, refers to both a place in imagination and a point in history—the Middle Passage. The quest for identity and place has profound meaning and resonance in an age of heterogenous identities.
In this exquisitely written and thought-provoking new work, Dionne Brand creates a map of her own art.
- IdiomaInglés
- EditorialVintage Canada
- Fecha de publicación7 agosto 2012
- Tamaño del archivo2732 KB
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Descripción del producto
Extracto. © Reimpreso con autorización. Reservados todos los derechos.
A Circumstantial Account of a State of Things
My grandfather said he knew what people we came from. I reeled off all the names I knew. Yoruba? Ibo? Ashanti? Mandingo? He said no to all of them, saying that he would know it if he heard it. I was thirteen. I was anxious for him to remember.
I pestered him for days. He told me to stop bothering him and that he would remember. Or stop bothering or else he would not remember. I hovered about him in any room in which he rested. I followed him around asking him if he wanted me to do this or that for him, clean his glasses, polish his shoes, bring his tea. I studied him intently when he came home. I searched the grey bristles of his moustache for any flicker which might suggest he was about to speak. He raised his Sunday Guardian newspaper to block my view. He shooed me away, telling me to find some book to read or work to do. At times it seemed as if Papa was on the brink of remembering. I imagined pulling the word off his tongue if only I knew the first syllable.
I scoured the San Fernando library and found no other lists of names at the time. Having no way of finding other names, I could only repeat the ones I knew, asking him if he was sure it wasn’t Yoruba, how about Ashanti? I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to be either one. I had heard that they were noble people. But I could also be Ibo; I had heard that they were gentle. And I had followed the war in Biafra. I was on their side.
Papa never remembered. Each week he came I asked him had he remembered. Each week he told me no. Then I stopped asking. He was disappointed. I was disappointed. We lived after that in this mutual disappointment. It was a rift between us. It gathered into a kind of estrangement. After that he grew old. I grew young. A small space opened in me.
I carried this space with me. Over time it has changed shape and light as the question it evoked has changed in appearance and angle. The name of the people we came from has ceased to matter. A name would have comforted a thirteen-year-old. The question however was more complicated, more nuanced. That moment between my grandfather and I several decades ago revealed a tear in the world. A steady answer would have mended this fault line quickly. I would have proceeded happily with a simple name. I may have played with it for a few days and then stored it away. Forgotten. But the rupture this exchange with my grandfather revealed was greater than the need for familial bonds. It was a rupture in history, a rupture in the quality of being. It was also a physical rupture, a rupture of geography.
My grandfather and I recognized this, which is why we were mutually disappointed. And which is why he could not lie to me. It would have been very easy to confirm any of the names I’d proposed to him. But he could not do this because he too faced this moment of rupture. We were not from the place where we lived and we could not remember where we were from or who we were. My grandfather could not summon up a vision of landscape or a people which would add up to a name. And it was profoundly disturbing.
Having no name to call on was having no past; having no past pointed to the fissure between the past and the present. That fissure is represented in the Door of No Return: that place where our ancestors departed one world for another; the Old World for the New. The place where all names were forgotten and all beginnings recast. In some desolate sense it was the creation place of Blacks in the New World Diaspora at the same time that it signified the end of traceable beginnings. Beginnings that can be noted through a name or a set of family stories that extend farther into the past than five hundred or so years, or the kinds of beginnings that can be expressed in a name which in turn marked out territory or occupation. I am interested in exploring this creation place – the Door of No Return, a place emptied of beginnings – as a site of belonging or unbelonging.
Maps
The rufous hummingbird travels five thousand miles from summer home to winter home and back. This hummingbird can fit into the palm of a hand. Its body defies the known physics of energy and flight. It knew its way before all known map-makers. It is a bird whose origins and paths are the blood of its small body. It is a bird whose desire to find its way depends on drops of nectar from flowers.
Water
Water is the first thing in my imagination. Over the reaches of the eyes at Guaya when I was a little girl, I knew that there was still more water. All beginning in water, all ending in water. Turquoise, aquamarine, deep green, deep blue, ink blue, navy, blue-black cerulean water.
To the south of this island on a clear day you could see the mainland of South America. Women and men with a tinge of red in the black of their faces and a burnt copper to their hair would arrive from the mainland to this island fleeing husbands or the law, or fleeing life. To the north was the hinterland of Trinidad, leading to the city which someone with great ambition in another century called Port-of-Spain. To the west was the bird’s beak of Venezuela and to the east, the immense Atlantic gaping to Africa. --Este texto se refiere a la edición kindle_edition .
My grandfather said he knew what people we came from. I reeled off all the names I knew. Yoruba? Ibo? Ashanti? Mandingo? He said no to all of them, saying that he would know it if he heard it. I was thirteen. I was anxious for him to remember.
I pestered him for days. He told me to stop bothering him and that he would remember. Or stop bothering or else he would not remember. I hovered about him in any room in which he rested. I followed him around asking him if he wanted me to do this or that for him, clean his glasses, polish his shoes, bring his tea. I studied him intently when he came home. I searched the grey bristles of his moustache for any flicker which might suggest he was about to speak. He raised his Sunday Guardian newspaper to block my view. He shooed me away, telling me to find some book to read or work to do. At times it seemed as if Papa was on the brink of remembering. I imagined pulling the word off his tongue if only I knew the first syllable.
I scoured the San Fernando library and found no other lists of names at the time. Having no way of finding other names, I could only repeat the ones I knew, asking him if he was sure it wasn’t Yoruba, how about Ashanti? I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to be either one. I had heard that they were noble people. But I could also be Ibo; I had heard that they were gentle. And I had followed the war in Biafra. I was on their side.
Papa never remembered. Each week he came I asked him had he remembered. Each week he told me no. Then I stopped asking. He was disappointed. I was disappointed. We lived after that in this mutual disappointment. It was a rift between us. It gathered into a kind of estrangement. After that he grew old. I grew young. A small space opened in me.
I carried this space with me. Over time it has changed shape and light as the question it evoked has changed in appearance and angle. The name of the people we came from has ceased to matter. A name would have comforted a thirteen-year-old. The question however was more complicated, more nuanced. That moment between my grandfather and I several decades ago revealed a tear in the world. A steady answer would have mended this fault line quickly. I would have proceeded happily with a simple name. I may have played with it for a few days and then stored it away. Forgotten. But the rupture this exchange with my grandfather revealed was greater than the need for familial bonds. It was a rupture in history, a rupture in the quality of being. It was also a physical rupture, a rupture of geography.
My grandfather and I recognized this, which is why we were mutually disappointed. And which is why he could not lie to me. It would have been very easy to confirm any of the names I’d proposed to him. But he could not do this because he too faced this moment of rupture. We were not from the place where we lived and we could not remember where we were from or who we were. My grandfather could not summon up a vision of landscape or a people which would add up to a name. And it was profoundly disturbing.
Having no name to call on was having no past; having no past pointed to the fissure between the past and the present. That fissure is represented in the Door of No Return: that place where our ancestors departed one world for another; the Old World for the New. The place where all names were forgotten and all beginnings recast. In some desolate sense it was the creation place of Blacks in the New World Diaspora at the same time that it signified the end of traceable beginnings. Beginnings that can be noted through a name or a set of family stories that extend farther into the past than five hundred or so years, or the kinds of beginnings that can be expressed in a name which in turn marked out territory or occupation. I am interested in exploring this creation place – the Door of No Return, a place emptied of beginnings – as a site of belonging or unbelonging.
Maps
The rufous hummingbird travels five thousand miles from summer home to winter home and back. This hummingbird can fit into the palm of a hand. Its body defies the known physics of energy and flight. It knew its way before all known map-makers. It is a bird whose origins and paths are the blood of its small body. It is a bird whose desire to find its way depends on drops of nectar from flowers.
Water
Water is the first thing in my imagination. Over the reaches of the eyes at Guaya when I was a little girl, I knew that there was still more water. All beginning in water, all ending in water. Turquoise, aquamarine, deep green, deep blue, ink blue, navy, blue-black cerulean water.
To the south of this island on a clear day you could see the mainland of South America. Women and men with a tinge of red in the black of their faces and a burnt copper to their hair would arrive from the mainland to this island fleeing husbands or the law, or fleeing life. To the north was the hinterland of Trinidad, leading to the city which someone with great ambition in another century called Port-of-Spain. To the west was the bird’s beak of Venezuela and to the east, the immense Atlantic gaping to Africa. --Este texto se refiere a la edición kindle_edition .
Críticas
“This book is a world, a triumph of art and thought, a compass for the ages.” —David Chariandy
“The depth of Brand’s love for her people is matched only by the honest luminosity with which she writes her account of our lives. This book’s profound understanding of the world that chattel slavery has made invites us to see this life alchemized into a more magnified vision of our being. It confirms Brand’s ceaseless foresight and the greatness of her gift.” —Canisia Lubrin
“The influence of A Map to the Door of No Return cannot be quantified. More than canonical, it has played a singular role in shaping the words, thinking, and craft of generations of Black writers across the diaspora, and will continue to do so for a long time to come.” —Robyn Maynard
"Open it anywhere and start reading and it makes sense. . . . her true home is not Africa, the Caribbean or Canada, but poetry." —Ottawa Citizen
"Moving and evocative. . . . Brand’s examination of her own personal odyssey is fascinating." —The Edmonton Journal
"Brand's is a voice both brave and beautiful." —NOW
"Dionne Brand—exults in the power of language and deploys it to lure us from harsh reality to metaphysical heights—[her] prose, so close to poetry, [is] almost musical." —National Post
"Brand has two gifts that are incendiary in combination: a concise and intelligent grasp of the subtleties of emotion and an apparently effortless facility with the language. The result is an extraordinary ability to capture the flicker of experience." —The Globe and Mail
"Brand's prose pays sharp attention to detail, with sensual, often playful descriptions. She injects a rhythm into her language and creates characters who burst with colour. This is a delicately structured, beautifully written novel, infused with rare emotional clarity." —The Independent, UK --Este texto se refiere a la edición kindle_edition .
“The depth of Brand’s love for her people is matched only by the honest luminosity with which she writes her account of our lives. This book’s profound understanding of the world that chattel slavery has made invites us to see this life alchemized into a more magnified vision of our being. It confirms Brand’s ceaseless foresight and the greatness of her gift.” —Canisia Lubrin
“The influence of A Map to the Door of No Return cannot be quantified. More than canonical, it has played a singular role in shaping the words, thinking, and craft of generations of Black writers across the diaspora, and will continue to do so for a long time to come.” —Robyn Maynard
"Open it anywhere and start reading and it makes sense. . . . her true home is not Africa, the Caribbean or Canada, but poetry." —Ottawa Citizen
"Moving and evocative. . . . Brand’s examination of her own personal odyssey is fascinating." —The Edmonton Journal
"Brand's is a voice both brave and beautiful." —NOW
"Dionne Brand—exults in the power of language and deploys it to lure us from harsh reality to metaphysical heights—[her] prose, so close to poetry, [is] almost musical." —National Post
"Brand has two gifts that are incendiary in combination: a concise and intelligent grasp of the subtleties of emotion and an apparently effortless facility with the language. The result is an extraordinary ability to capture the flicker of experience." —The Globe and Mail
"Brand's prose pays sharp attention to detail, with sensual, often playful descriptions. She injects a rhythm into her language and creates characters who burst with colour. This is a delicately structured, beautifully written novel, infused with rare emotional clarity." —The Independent, UK --Este texto se refiere a la edición kindle_edition .
Nota de la solapa
to the Door of No Return</i> is a timely book that explores the relevance and nature of identity and belonging in a culturally diverse and rapidly changing world. It is an insightful, sensitive and poetic book of discovery.<br><br>Drawing on cartography, travels, narratives of childhood in the Caribbean, journeys across the Canadian landscape, African ancestry, histories, politics, philosophies and literature, Dionne Brand sketches the shifting borders of home and nation, the connection to place in Canada and the world beyond.<br><br>The title, <i>A Map to the Door of No Return</i>, refers to both a place in imagination and a point in history – the Middle Passage. The quest for identity and place has profound meaning and resonance in an age of heterogenous identities.<br><br>In this exquisitely written and thought-provoking new work, Dionne Brand creates a map of her own art. --Este texto se refiere a la edición kindle_edition .
Contraportada
"A Map to the Door of No Return is a timely book that explores the relevance and nature of identity and belonging in a culturally diverse and rapidly changing world. It is an insightful, sensitive and poetic book of discovery.
Drawing on cartography, travels, narratives of childhood in the Caribbean, journeys across the Canadian landscape, African ancestry, histories, politics, philosophies and literature, Dionne Brand sketches the shifting borders of home and nation, the connection to place in Canada and the world beyond.
The title, "A Map to the Door of No Return, refers to both a place in imagination and a point in history -- the Middle Passage. The quest for identity and place has profound meaning and resonance in an age of heterogenous identities.
In this exquisitely written and thought-provoking new work, Dionne Brand creates a map of her own art. --Este texto se refiere a la edición kindle_edition .
Drawing on cartography, travels, narratives of childhood in the Caribbean, journeys across the Canadian landscape, African ancestry, histories, politics, philosophies and literature, Dionne Brand sketches the shifting borders of home and nation, the connection to place in Canada and the world beyond.
The title, "A Map to the Door of No Return, refers to both a place in imagination and a point in history -- the Middle Passage. The quest for identity and place has profound meaning and resonance in an age of heterogenous identities.
In this exquisitely written and thought-provoking new work, Dionne Brand creates a map of her own art. --Este texto se refiere a la edición kindle_edition .
Biografía del autor
Dionne Brand won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry and the Trillium Award in 1997 for <i>Land to Light On</i>. Her novel <i>In Another Place, Not Here</i> was shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Trillium Award, and was published in the US and the UK to great acclaim. Her latest novel, <i>At the Full and Change of the Moon</i> received rave reviews internationally as well. Dionne Brand lives in Toronto. --Este texto se refiere a la edición kindle_edition .
Detalles del producto
- ASIN : B008NW6MYA
- Editorial : Vintage Canada (7 agosto 2012)
- Idioma : Inglés
- Tamaño del archivo : 2732 KB
- Texto a voz : Activado
- Lector de pantalla : Compatibles
- Tipografía mejorada : Activado
- X-Ray : No activado
- Word Wise : Activado
- Longitud de impresión : 241 páginas
- Opiniones de los clientes:
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Opiniones de clientes
4,8 de 5 estrellas
4,8 de 5
78 valoraciones globales
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5,0 de 5 estrellas
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 2016
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Amazon Customer
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Way-Finding Through Origins and Belongings
Revisado en Canadá el 7 de abril de 2016
'"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.'"
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.'"
Subrata Kumar Das
5,0 de 5 estrellas
Five Stars
Revisado en Canadá el 13 de julio de 2018
I am proud to own a copy of this autobiography of Dionne Brand, formerly Poet Laureate of Toronto.
Sallie Reynolds
5,0 de 5 estrellas
A map to self-discovery and to discovery of the world
Revisado en los Estados Unidos el 22 de julio de 2020
It is odd that such a personal telling can open such long-hidden doors in a reader's brain. I read a few pages at night and each time it was like walking down a street in a strange, beautiful city (as i imagine Toronto to be) and suddenly coming on a familiar block. I knew these houses, these stores, the way the sunlight struck a tree or the corner of a window. I learned, in the end, more about myself than I ever thought to. More than I did of the external life of this remarkable writer. Though I feel I know - or almost know - her habits of thought, and her experiences in her home island, in Granada, in Burnt River are forever alive in my heart and mind.
Littlebug
1,0 de 5 estrellas
boring
Revisado en los Estados Unidos el 23 de junio de 2021
boring and oddly written. didn't finish it.
