The Study of Racialism

mymulatto · Experienced User Joined: 06 Jul 2005 {Posts: 137 }

http://www.amazon.ca/Black-Berry-Sweet-Juice-Lawrence/dp/0002000202

In 1997, Lawrence Hill wrote a masterful novel detailing the multi-generational story of a Canadian man, the product of a black father and white mother. Any Known Blood was a critical and commercial success, receiving terrific reviews and making national bestseller lists. Now Hill, who is also the child of a mixed-race marriage between two prominent human rights activists, takes his intimate knowledge, insightful understanding and a voice powered by candor and dry wit, to the pages of Black Berry, Sweet Juice, the first book to look at what it's like to be both black and white in Canada today.

This is his story of growing up in the sixties in Don Mills, at the time a whiter-than-white Toronto suburb. It's the fascinating history of Hills parents' background, how a white woman from South Dakota married a black American, both eventually moving to Ontario. It's the evolving exploration of a man in search of his identity -- as a boy, as neither black nor white. It is also a provocative social analysis that examines contemporary Canadian racial issues through history, current cases and a series of interviews with people of mixed race: Is Canada, from a mixed race perspective, really the True North, Strong and Free? Why is there still hostility towards romantic relationships between black and white people in Canada? And why is it many Canadians know more about blacks in America than in our own country?

Hill isn't afraid to tackle the big issues, his often irreverent humor deftly exploding more than a few stereotyped notions. A book that is keenly and sharply reflective, Black Berry, Sweet Juice presents a tellin picture of the true nature of Canadian color.