A vibrant, revealing memoir about the cultural and familial pressures that shaped George Elliott Clarke's early life in the Black Canadian community that he calls Africadia, centred in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
As a boy, George Elliott Clarke knew that a great deal was expected from him and his two brothers. The descendant of a highly accomplished lineage on his paternal side-great-grandson to William Andrew White, the first Black officer (non-commissioned) in the British army-George felt called to live up to the family name. In contrast, his mother's relatives were warm, down-to-earth country folk. Such contradictions underlay much of his life and upbringing-Black and White, country and city, outstanding and ordinary, high and low. With vulnerability and humour, George shows us how these dualities shaped him as a poet and thinker.
At the book's heart is George's turbulent relationship with his father, an...
