The historical richness of black writing in Canada is significant and, as such, efforts to preclude and to erase blackness from its place in the Canadian imaginary have been once again significantly highlighted by the works covered in Winfried Siemerling's The Black Atlantic Reconsidered: Black Canadian Writing, Cultural History, and the Presence of the Past. Siemerling ends his book with his own call for change not only in what is considered Canadian literature, but also in institutions that shape Canadianness. Siemerling's call is just one of many asserting that black writings have been marginalized from the main discourse in Canada for far too long.

The Black Atlantic Reconsidered is a useful resource for anyone wanting to understand the development of black Canadian literature and the inclusion of black writing in the Canadian literary and social imaginary, as well as engage with Siemerling's flexible and diverse literary readings of selected texts and his situating the contribution of black Canadian writings within the discourse of the black Atlantic and their reflections on modernity. Having said this, it is also important to note that much of the work discussed in this book has been published elsewhere, but by including it in this work on the black Atlantic, Siemerling adds another dimension to the ongoing conversation on the black Atlantic and its importance to modernity, a conversation shaped by Paul Gilroy in his seminal work The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993). Gilroy's book has been critiqued for not including a perspective on black Canada in this critical conversation on the black Atlantic and modernity. And while The Black Atlantic Reconsidered speaks to this gap, it also reminds readers that universally over the last three centuries some of the work by black people has not been given prestige on its own merit.

Extensive writings by black people living in Canada from slavery to the present provide the focus of this book. These narratives showcase the intertwining of early African American and black Canadian experiences between the seventeenth century and mid-nineteenth, shifting to reflect mostly the black Canadian experience after slavery was abolished in the United States and many American blacks returned to live there. Siemerling examines these narratives and situates them contextually within Canadian literary history and tradition. Indeed, in the “Preface,” Siemerling states, “The main purpose of this book is to contribute to the task of making the fascinating and rich body of black Canadian writing available to a much wider readership and for more extensive contexts of discussion” (ix). It is important to note that the book attends to both anglophone and francophone writing.

The Black Atlantic Reconsidered contains six chapters separated in two parts: Part I, “Early Testimony and the Black Canadian Nineteenth Century,” covers narratives of slavery and the nineteenth century, examining historically the development of black Canadian literature and its connection to Canadian literature during this period. This section draws on accounts from multiple primary sources that delineate the history and contextualize the literary accounts within it. In so doing, Siemerling elevates some narratives that were buried or obscured in Canadian literary history, painstaking work that complements research being done by scholars of nineteenth-century Canada such as George Elliott Clarke and Jennifer Harris, whom Siemerling mentions in the book, as well as selected black Canadian writers whose work Siemerling engages. Part II, “The Presence of the Past,” examines the literature produced during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, employing the familiar technique of Sankofa – that is, going back and getting that which one has forgotten – to examine the work by selected black Canadian writers such as Austin C. Clarke, Dionne Brand, George Elliott Clarke, Wayde Compton, and Mairuth Sarsfield, demonstrating how their work draws on the past to contribute to the narrative about history and development of Canada and its literary tradition. Readers can find in this book literary representations of migratory and settlement life of black people from the United States, within Canada, and from the Caribbean as they try to navigate Canada with its diversity and differences.

A recipient of the 2015 Gabrielle Roy Prize for Canadian Literary Criticism, Siemerling offers a book that is comprehensive in its historical and literary reach, but it is not and does not claim to be an exhaustive project. In his generous sweep of black Canadian literary contributions to Canadian literature as made by scholars and of the texts he analyzes, Siemerling cites many scholars, including myself. The book contains extensive endnotes, a bibliography of the cited black Canadian writings from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries, and an extensive list of works cited demonstrating the wide scope of this work. There are some citations missing from the index, so readers should consult also the sources in the list of works cited. The Black Atlantic Reconsidered engages an impressive range of black Canadian writings by authors from interdisciplinary fields, establishing the value of this book to multiple disciplines.