As the seventh poet laureate, Dr. Afua Cooper serves a two-year term as an ambassador and advocate for literacy, literature and the arts. She will reflect the vitality of the community through appearances and readings of poetry at civic events and activities.
An anthology of African-Canadian writing, Black Writers Matter offers a cross-section of established writers and newcomers to the literary world who tackle contemporary and pressing issues with beautiful, sometimes raw, prose.
How is the Sir George Williams “affair” remembered, forgotten, or contested? How is blackness included or occluded in decolonizing dialogues?
Continue reading “The Fire That Time”
A Fluid Frontier…: Slavery, Resistance, and the Underground Railroad in the Detroit River Borderland is a new research on the long, shared struggle for freedom by people of African descent in the Detroit River borderlands from a uniquely bi-national perspective…
In this wonderful new short story anthology, eleven of Canada’s top children’s authors contribute stories of immigration, displacement and change, exploring the frustration and uncertainty those changes can bring.
My Name Is Phillis Wheatley: A Story of Slavery and Freedom is a remarkable story of Phillis Wheatley, who is born into an African family of griots, or storytellers, but captured by slave raiders and forced aboard a slave ship…
Continue reading “My Name is Phillis Wheatley…”
Often shocking, always compelling, Afua Cooper’s novel, My Name Is Henry Bibb: A Story of Slavery and Freedom, is based on the life of Henry Bibb, an American slave who after repeated attempts escaped in 1841 to become an anti-slavery speaker, author and founder of a Black newspaper. Cooper takes painstakingly researched details about slavery and weaves an intimate story of Bibb’s young life, which is overshadowed by inconceivable brutality.
Continue reading “The Young Henry Bibb”
Afua Cooper draws from her wide knowledge of history – personal and monumental – to evoke the ancestors, vistas of her childhood, memories of family and powerful passion in this new book of poetry, Copper Woman. The colour red appears in many forms – energy, passion, blood, violence, love, fire, lightning storm, rage, and roses.
Continue reading “Copper Woman”
Writer, historian and poet Afua Cooper tells the astonishing story of Marie-Joseph Angélique, a slave woman convicted of starting a fire that destroyed a large part of Montréal in April 1734 and condemned to die a brutal death.
The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto!, a richly illustrated book, examines the urban connection of the clandestine system of secret routes, safe houses and “conductors.” Not only does it trace the story of the Underground Railroad itself and how people courageously made the trip north to Canada and freedom, but it also explores what happened to them after they arrived.
Continue reading “The Underground Railroad…”
Incantations and Utterances; Women, Poetry, and Dub
(Toronto: Sister Vision Press, 1999). Continue reading “Incantations and Utterances”
We’re Rooted Here and They Can’t Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women’s History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994; reprint 1999). Winner of the Joseph Brant Award for History.
My granny seh she have a bad memory
when I ask her to tell me
some of her life
Seh she can’t rememba much but
she did rememba di 1910 storm
and how dem house blow down
an dey had to go live wid her granny
down a bottom house
