A multi-author collection edited by three of the core members of Black Lives Matter – Toronto. Personal essays, dialogues, scholarly essays, poetry, photo essays. Includes accounts of the iconic moments of BLM-TO’s founding and early years of action, but ranges far beyond in its exploration of Blackness and Black struggle in Canada today. I’m a lot less interested in edited collections in general than I used to be – I’m just not as into reading them, and I’m not sure why. It may have to do with the fact that they are inevitably uneven, I don’t know. But if you are going to read one, this is a pretty good one to go for. Yes, there were a handful of pieces that were weaker, but on the whole they are readable, interesting, and push forward smart, radical thinking that taught me a great deal. And the best in this collection are truly excellent – things like the collaboration by El Jones and Randolph Riley about Blackness in Nova Scotia, anti-carceral struggle, and Riley’s own journey with incarceration; the dialogue between Robyn Maynard and Leanne Simpson on Black/Indigenous solidarity; Rodney Diverlus’ reflections on protest tactics through the lens of choreography (an idea I had never encountered before and thought was fascinating); and Paige Galette’s personal essay on moving to the far north. I also appreciated that along with the specific work done in individual pieces pushing forward important ideas related to Blackness and internationalism, disability justice, Black arts and the movement, Black Muslim experience in Canada, Blackness and Canada’s blood system, remembering Black queer and trans histories in Toronto, and a range of other topics, the collection as a whole also conveys an overall sensibility that is powerful and compelling, and that I think captures something about the current wave of Black struggle and about the Canadian capitalist settler colonial heteropatriarchal white supremacy that it seeks to transform.
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.