Toward an Anti-Racist Poetics seeks to dislodge the often unspoken white universalism that underpins literary production and reception today. In this personal and thoughtful book, award-winning author Wayde Compton explores how we might collectively develop a poetic approach that makes space for diversity by doing away with universalism in both lyric and avant-garde verse. Poignant and contemporary examples reveal how white authors often forget that their whiteness is a racial position. In...

Wayde Compton's debut story collection is imbued with the color of speculative fiction; one strand of stories follows the emergence of a volcanic island, which alternatively becomes the site of a radical Native peoples' occupation, a real-estate development, and finally a detention center for illegal immigrants. Moving from 2001 through to 2025, The Outer Harbour is at once a history book and a cautionary tale of the future, condensing and confounding our preconceived ideas around...

In this stunning graphic novel, Lacuna is a girl without a family, a past, or a proper home. She lives alone in a swamp made of ink, but with the help of Polaris, a will-o’-the-wisp, she embarks for the fabled Northern Kingdom, where she might find people like her. The only way to get there, though, is to travel the strange and dangerous Blue Road that stretches to the horizon like a mark upon a page. Along the way, Lacuna must overcome trials such as the twisted briars of the Thicket of T...

"Compton pushes us to look beneath the surface—past those comforting tales of nationhood and racial solidarity—to the more nebulous and ever-shifting truth. This is a brilliant and original work that should be mandatory reading for any student of race and history."—Danzy Senna, author of CaucasiaAfter Canaan, the first nonfiction book by acclaimed African Canadian poet Wayde Compton, repositions the North American discussion of race in the wake of the tumultuous t...

This book is a comprehensive analysis of the literary oeuvre of Wayde Compton, examining the interplay between modes of literary production, urban commemoration, the formation of Black racial identity on the margins of the diaspora, and coalitions of solidarity with other communities in Vancouver.Stemming from an interdisciplinary perspective that blends Spatial Literary Studies, Hip hop epistemology, and the transmodern paradigm, this book presents a dynamic model of Black identit...

"Imagine it is the mid 1800’s, Western Canada. Also known as ""the father of British Columbia"", James Douglas is the governor of the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. Governor Douglas was born in British Guiana into a ""Scotch West Indian"" family with a Scottish father and a Caribbean mother. At Fort St. James he married Amelia Connolly, of Métis ancestry. In 1864 Douglas stepped down as governor and was knighted as a reward for his services. Inspired by extensive histor...

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 3,0, University of Vienna (Anglistik), course: Popular Literature in Canada, language: English, abstract: The following paper is concerned with the artist Wayde Compton and the African-Canadian background of his work. In the beginning, Compton´s life as well as some insights into the historical and socio-cultural background that characterize the author´s life and his works will be d...

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2, University of Vienna, language: English, abstract: The following paper is concerned with the artist Wayde Compton and the African-Canadian background of his work. In the beginning, Compton´s life as well as some insights into the historical and socio-cultural background that characterize the author´s life and his works will be described. A discussion on Compton´s view on topics s...