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March 26, 2004
Canadian "Urban Literature"
San Grewal was a classmate of mine in Western's Journalism program. He comments on the emergence of "urban literature" in the Canadian Market.
"The students, meanwhile, would rattle off authors like Sister Souljah, Eric Jerome Dickey, Colin Channer and Sharon Flake."
...
One of the books often mentioned by young black girls in Toronto interested in the genre is Nalo Hopkinson's first novel Brown Girl In The Ring. "Oh yeah, they snap it up off the shelves," Sadu says.
It's a mix of science-fiction and inner-city life, about a young Caribbean girl who calls upon the traditional spirituality of her ancestors after moving to Toronto, to help save the inner city once it is barricaded and left to rubble because of a strange event that takes place.
"You have great Canadian writers in their 40s and 50s, Nalo Hopkinson, George Elliott Clarke, Cecil Foster," Chapman says. "But then there's a drop off."
And it's the younger readers, agrees Chapman, who most desperately crave literature that reflects their personal stories.
TheStar.com - A hip-hop approach to lit
Posted by thdyck on March 26, 2004
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