book review essay

Running head : RACIAL ISSUES

Racial Issues in Autobiographical Prose of Canadian Authors

Living in the civilized society in the 21st century we should not forget that still there are marginalized minority groups which are oppressed and can not have equal rights with the native inhabitants . Some people may not be conscious of this fact but we can not deny it . Living in a Diaspora community in a foreign country people quite always have some difficulties and problems

Dionne Brand 's book A Map to the Door of No Return is a story

about identity and people 's belonging to black culture in the contemporary society . The title of the book refers to the place in West Africa , where a great number of slaves were hold . It was a remote place , physically and culturally inaccessible . The title symbolizes this place , from which there was no return for the African people to the real world and normal life . The road to this place was the Middle Passage , which absolutely departed the person from the Diaspora . This is a book that provokes us to think and analyze and see the situation from the new perspective Brand presents us a picture of her childhood in the Caribbean , numerous travels and journeys across Canada , histories and African ancestry

Grand was born in HYPERLINK "http /en .wikipedia .org /w /index .php ?title Guayguayare 2C_Trinidad_and_T obago action edit " \o "Guayguayare , Trinidad and Tobago " Guayguayare and in 1953 she emigrated to Canada . She has always been an active protector and fighter for the rihts and freedoms of the cultural minorities , especially for the rights of black people . This book is a bright example of this fact

The search for identity is a difficult choice and not every person is able to find the correct way . At the very beginning of the book Brand tries to find origins of her family . She asks her grandfather about their motherland and ancestors but he does not say anything exact . Not knowing anything about the past and origin of the family , it is impossible to build the normal future . When there is no connection between the present and the past , the person gets lost in this world She describes it as the creation place of Blacks in the New World Diaspora at the same time that it signifies the end of traceable begginings (Hunter , 1992 ,

. 267

Describing the life of the black community , Brand describes her feeling at that time and she says that to live in the Black Diaspora means to live in an unreal world . She describes the place , where most Africans were hold without their agreement and will . This process can be called migration , but this is very relative because the Africans did not want to move , it was a compulsory action . It was racism in its manifestation - one of the greatest disasters of the twentieth century

The Concubine 's Children written by Denise Chong is a story with autobiographical elements , which we also can find in...