In 1854, during an anti-slavery meeting in York, the Reverend Samuel Ringgold Ward criticized Britain's moral superiority regarding abolition. Since the Tudor times, Ward said, “the people of this island had been reddened in the blood of [my] race,” deliberately targeting the nation's hypocrisy regarding celebrations of freedom while simultaneously turning a blind eye to the kidnapping of black British sailors into slavery (York Herald, 28 October 1854, 6).

As Nele Sawallisch points out in her seminal monograph Fugitive Borders, this previous understanding of Ward as an “empire apologist” is simply false (141). Only by providing a close reading of Ward's narrative (in isolation and in conjunction with fellow black Canadian writers) can we try to grasp the conflicting identities of black men who negotiated and struggled with the prevailing belief that Canada (and by extension Britain) was a “mighty empire that provides freedom to those who seek it” (141).

Ward is one of the four fascinating black male writers analyzed in Fugitive Borders. The texts, which include A Narrative of Thomas Smallwood, (A Coloured Man) (1851), The Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro (1855) by Samuel Ringgold Ward, The Narrative of the Life and Sufferings of Rev. Richard Warren, (A Fugitive Slave) (1856), and Austin Steward's Twenty-Two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman (1857), were written between 1850 and 1861, and are uniquely shaped by their residency in Canada West (present-day Ontario). Written in a clear, eloquent and engaging style, the book is separated into five chapters, “Fugitive Borders,” “Religion,” Radicalism,” “Heroism,” and “Community,” the latter four focussing on a specific narrative. By devoting entire chapters to each figure, Sawallisch shines a crucial and remarkable spotlight on the integral contributions by black Canadians, interpreting the texts through a transnational lens and at the same time signifying the importance of “cross-border individuals who negotiate[d] borders, personhood, and community” (14).

Black Canadian literature is a burgeoning academic field, and this volume is an essential and major contribution to the black Atlantic canon – and specifically transatlantic black Canadian writing.Footnote ¹ Fugitive Borders goes beyond current historiography not only by refocussing attention on black Canadian writers but also by situating these four important figures within the black Atlantic and the “fluid frontier” of the North American borderland (9). As the author correctly points out, written testimony by formerly enslaved African Americans cannot and should not always be regarded under the label of a slave narrative: instead, she aims to “explore Black autobiographies as acts of textual community building that contributes to the emergence of a Black North America across national borders” (9–10). While all of the figures used the slave narrative “template to express complex, often ambivalent, attitudes towards how authors wrote about their intricate lives,” their mobility and fluid identity expose “their status as versatile abolitionists, activists, businesspersons and clergymen” (9–10).

One of the book's true strengths lies in its archival recovery and reimagination. Richard Warren's narrative, for example, has been completely neglected by scholars: born enslaved in North Carolina, Warren's narrative is not only published in Canada (thus providing us with a unique form of black Canadian literature) but also entirely framed through Warren's religiosity: he centers himself at the heart of black communities and preachers in particular in Canada West and the northern states of America.

It would, perhaps, be worthwhile considering how these texts were published and circulated. If “community-building” (10) was a primary goal of the narratives, is it possible to know why the authors chose specific publishers, or perhaps why more narratives were not published in Canada West? Linked to this, a greater analysis (possibly in the introduction) of the activism and literary work of other African American or black Canadian men would enhance understanding of the period Sawallisch looks at. For example, while Josiah Henson is mentioned briefly, his life story would provide an interesting parallel, since he was integral in building a community in Dresden and he also travelled to Britain several times. These are minor points, though. The book will have a wide appeal for scholars and students studying American and Canadian literature, the black Atlantic, the black diaspora, slavery and abolition, transatlantic studies and Canadian history in general.