Nonfiction. Literary Criticism. African American Studies. Black Canadian women must constantly incorporate changes to their identities to faces the challenges of living in a multicultural society. NATURALLY WOMAN examines the ways in which Black immigrant women must adapt to survive in a multicultural country such as Canada without losing their sense of self. The author examines the texts of five major modern/contemporary Canadian writers: Dionne Brand, Marlene Nourbese Philip, Tessa McWatt, Claire Harris, and Makeda Silvera, through prismatic criticism and by applying and extending a number of feminist discourses concerning Black women writing: identity, literary representations of female sojourn in Canada (as simultaneously aboveground and underground), feminist archetypal/myth criticism, and the discourse of mother/daughter/grandmother/substitute mother relationships. The book argues that there is a universal central myth on which the writings of these marginalized women are based and shows how some of the challenges of multiculturalism can be overcome, and how multiculturalism can become a site for creativity and innovation.

Author City: Halifax, NS CAN

Sharon Morgan Beckford is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she lectures on literatures and cultures of the African Diaspora. She received her Ph.D. in English from York University, Toronto, Ontario. Her dissertation, (Un)Recovered Persephones: The Gendered Quest for Individuation in a Selection of Literature by Black Canadian Women Writers, won the 2006 Mary McEwen Ph.D. Dissertation Award for the best dissertation in Women's Studies from the Centre for Feminist Research, York University. Her work has been published in numerous journals across Canada and in many anthologies.