No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 December 2020
Central to Siemerling’s impressive study of black Canadian writing is an optimism about the recuperative potential of historical knowledge. My contribution to the forum acknowledges that potential, while raising questions about the limits of such knowledge for addressing the persistence of racist ideologies and practices. My test case is Siemerling’s fine reading of Lawrence Hill’s novels.
1 Christopher Castiglia argues for the value of hope in critical writing in his splendid The Practices of Hope: Literary Criticism in Disenchanted Times (New York: New York University Press, 2017).
2 On the importance of the Gothic to the study of slavery in nineteenth-century US literature, see Goddu, Teresa, Gothic America: Narrative, History, and Nation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997 Google Scholar).
3 See Giles, Paul, “Hemispheric Partiality,” American Literary History 18.3 (2006)Google Scholar: 648–55.
4 On Douglass in the novels of Hill and other contemporary writers, see Levine, Robert S., Race, Transnationalism, and Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)Google Scholar, chap. 10.