“This book extends Harriet Tubman’s legacy in Black intellectual, political, and artistic life. In its impressive range across disciplines and fields, Harriet's Legacies asserts Tubman as a still-living presence and inspiration for the work of artists and scholars alike, and it demonstrates how a uniquely Canadian reading of Tubman produces new intellectual paths for our time.” Rinaldo Walcott, University of Toronto and author of The Long Emancipation: Moving toward Black Freedom

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“This volume is timely … as it situates Harriet Tubman as a starting point for a variety of approaches to Black Canada, past and present. The collaborative thinking, affiliative longing, and creative visioning that this volume models and brings together powerfully demonstrate how a nonlinear view of legacy can enrich our turn towards the future even in the face of so much uncertainty.” Canadian Geographer

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“Harriet’s Legacies uses the brief but important residence of Harriet Tubman in southern Ontario (Canada West, to be precise) as a starting point to explore new meanings of the origins, experiences, and trajectory of the Black diaspora in Canada. The book sheds new light on the profound transnational significance of the American cultural figure and activist by moving existing discourses beyond national boundaries in ways that invite us to think more fully about the diasporic dynamics that inform African Canadian life. Adopting a resolutely multidisciplinary approach and gathering the work of various artists and scholars in Black Studies, the 21-chapter volume does not simply look back but sees the impact of Harriet Tubman “as ongoing, collective practices of antiracism and freedom seeking.” In doing so, Harriet’s Legacies provides a renewed vigour for both African Canadian Studies and the pursuit of social justice in our times.” Canadian Studies Network 2023 Best Edited Collection Prize jury

Ronald Cummings is an associate professor of Black Studies at McMaster University.

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Natalee Caple is an associate professor of Canadian Literature and Creative Writing at Brock University.

Figures and Tables ix
Acknowledgments and a Brief Note on Editorial Choice xi
Introduction On the Non-linearity of Legacy: Harriet Tubman and Our Current Historical Juncture 17
Ronald Cummings and Natalee Caple

Section One On the Legacies of Radical Mobility
1 The Cataract House Hotel: Underground to Canada through the Niagara River Borderlands 41
Karolyn Smardz Frost
2 A Selection of “Canticles” (Meditations on Slavery and Imperialism) 80
George Elliott Clarke
3 Radical Legacies in Black Nineteenth-Century Canadian Writing 104
Nele Sawallisch
4 The Miracle of Ann Maria Jackson, Slave Fugitive and Heroine of the Underground Railroad 118
Afua Cooper
5 Free Black North: Photography and Transnational Identities in Nineteenth-Century Southern Ontario 141
Julie Crooks
6 Colour-Phobia in Canada: William Wells Brown’s Cosmopolitan Mobility 151
Carole Lynn Stewart

Section Two Transnational Poetics of Space Making
7 Before the Bricks and Mortar: The Grassroots Development of the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument 171
dann j. Broyld and Shaun Winton
8 M is for Migrant: Scenes in Response to Three Questions and a Statement from M. Jacqui Alexander’s Pedagogies of Crossing 196
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
9 She Balances the Border 200
Kaie Kellough
10 Dionne Brand, Map-Maker 204
Nalini Mohabir
11 From Site to Sound and Film: Critical Black Canadian Memory Culture and Sylvia Hamilton’s The Little Black School House 226
Winfried Siemerling

Section Three Strategizing Survival and Rethinking Colonial Ordering
12 We Were Here: Reclaiming African Canadian History through Heritage Plaques 245
Natasha Henry
13 On the Aggrecultural Poetics of Sonnet’s Shakespeare 256
Sonnet L’Abbé
14 Mobilizing the Bard: Joseph Pierre’s Shakespeare’s Nigga (2013) 264
Pilar Cuder-Domínguez
15 Building Black and Indigenous Alliances for hiv Prevention and Health Promotion 278
Ciann L. Wilson, Sarah Flicker, and Jean-Paul Restoule
16 Blood is a Politic of Place-Making: Blackness, Queerness, and the Construction of the Donor 304
OmiSoore H. Dryden

Section Four Creation is Legacy: Creativity and Futures
17 The Story of Sister Vision: Black Women and Women of Colour Press - We Had to Fight, Cuss, and Kick Every Inch of the Way 323
Makeda Silvera
18 Dub and the Right to Exist: An Interview with Lillian Allen 344
Lillian Allen, with Natalee Caple and Ronald Cummings
19 Dub Pedagogies: An Interview with d’bi.young anitafrika 357
Ronald Cummings
20 Spoken Word: A Signifying Gesture Toward Possibility 372
Andrea Thompson
21 wordsoundsystemsengineering: Meta-dub and Creation 392
Klyde Broox

Contributors 409
Index 417

Winner
Best Edited Collection Prize
Canadian Studies Network
2023

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