Writer, historian and poet Afua Cooper tells the astonishing story of Marie-Joseph Angélique, a slave woman convicted of starting a fire that destroyed a large part of Montréal in April 1734 and condemned to die a brutal death. In a powerful retelling of Angélique’s story -- now supported by archival illustrations -- Cooper builds on 15 years of research to shed new light on a rebellious Portuguese-born black woman who refused to accept her indentured servitude. At the same time, Cooper co...

Copper Woman and Other Poems is a collection of poems that announces a humanistic vision, dealing with such themes as rebirth (physical and symbolic), mythology, memory, bondage, blood, family, identities in flux, migration, politics and flights of fancy. The contents move back and forth between the past and the present, and project into the future, envisioning a new world/a new creation. The message that we are our brothers and our sisters keepers and that the earth is our home – a home t...

Often shocking, always compelling, Afua Cooper's novel is based on the life of Henry Bibb, an American slave who after repeated attempts escaped in 1841 to become an anti-slavery speaker, author and founder of a Black newspaper. Cooper takes painstakingly researched details about slavery and weaves an intimate story of Bibb's young life, which is overshadowed by inconceivable brutality.At nine years old, Henry is separated from his mother and brothers and hired out, suffering abuse...

This is the remarkable story of Phillis Wheatley, who is born into an African family of griots, or storytellers, but captured by slave raiders and forced aboard a slave ship, where appalling conditions spell death for many of her companions. Numerous sharks follow the ship, feeding on the corpses of slaves thrown overboard.Weakened by the voyage and near death in a Boston slave market, Wheatley is bought by a kind family who nurses her back to health and teaches her to read and wri...

In these eleven original stories, characters bravely face the challenges of settling into a new life.In this wonderful new short story anthology, eleven of Canada's top children's authors contribute stories of immigration, displacement and change, exploring the frustration and uncertainty those changes can bring. Told in first-person narratives, this collection features a diverse cast of boys and girls, each one living at a different point in Canada's vast...

"The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto! stands out as an engaging and highly readable account of the lives of Black people in Toronto in the 1800s. Adrienne Shadd, Afua Cooper and Karolyn Smardz Frost offer many helpful points of entry for readers learning for the first time about Black history in Canada. They also give surprising and detailed information to enrich the understanding of people already passionate about this n...

Halifax’s former Poet Laureate Afua Cooper and photographer Wilfried Raussert collaborate in this book of poems and photographs focused on everyday Black experiences. The result is a jambalaya — a dialogue between image and text. Cooper translates Raussert’s photos into poetry, painting a profound image of what disembodied historical facts might look like when they are embodied in contemporary characters. This visual and textual conversation honours the multiple layers of Blackness in the ...

Stories of the hopeful, brave people who fled slavery and made Toronto their home.“An engaging and highly readable account of the lives of Black people in Toronto in the 1800s.” — Lawrence Hill, bestselling author of The IllegalThe Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto! explores Toronto’s role as a destination for thousands of freedom seekers before the American Civil War. This new edition traces pathways taken by people, enslaved and f...

Stories of the hopeful, brave people who fled slavery and made Toronto their home.“An engaging and highly readable account of the lives of Black people in Toronto in the 1800s.” — Lawrence Hill, bestselling author of The IllegalThe Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto! explores Toronto’s role as a destination for thousands of freedom seekers before the American Civil War. This new edition traces pathways taken by people, enslaved and f...

Illuminating two hundred years of lost Black History through the lens of an iconic abolitionist settlementIn the Light of Dawn shines a spotlight on the Dawn Settlement, a historic abolitionist community in rural Ontario led by Reverend Josiah Henson (the real “Uncle Tom” of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s landmark anti-slavery novel), and reveals how the town’s scope and impact eclipses previously narrow interpretations as a “failed” utopian colony at a terminus ...

"Black Writers? African, Bluesy, Classical, Disrespectful, Erudite, Fiery, Groovy, Haunting, Inspiring, Jazzy, Knowing, Liberating, Militant, Nervy, Optimistic, Pugnacious, Quixotic, Rambunctious, Seductive, Truculent, Urgent, Vivacious, Wicked, X-ray sharp, Yearning, Zesty. And so, they matter!" —George Elliott ClarkeAn anthology of African-Canadian writing, Black Writers Matter offers a cross-section of established writers and newcomers to the literary world who tackle c...

"Black Writers? African, Bluesy, Classical, Disrespectful, Erudite, Fiery, Groovy, Haunting, Inspiring, Jazzy, Knowing, Liberating, Militant, Nervy, Optimistic, Pugnacious, Quixotic, Rambunctious, Seductive, Truculent, Urgent, Vivacious, Wicked, X-ray sharp, Yearning, Zesty. And so, they matter!" —George Elliott Clarke An anthology of African-Canadian writing, Black Writers Matter offers a cross-section of established writers and newcomers to the literary world who tackle contemporary and ...