George Elliott Clarke - Where Beauty Survived : An Africadian Memoir

FICTION

The Motorcyclist

George & Rue

POETRY

White

Canticles II (MMXX)

Portia White: A Portrait in Words

Canticles II (MMXIX)

These Are the Words (with John B. Lee)

Canticles I (MMXVII)

Canticles I (MMXVI)

Gold

Extra Illicit Sonnets

Traverse

Illicit Sonnets

Red

I & I

Blues and Bliss

Black

Illuminated Verses

Blue

Execution Poems

Lush Dreams, Blue Exile

Whylah Falls

Saltwater Spirituals and Deeper Blues

CHILDREN S POETRY

Lasso the Wind: Aurlias Verses and Other Poems

When I was a boy in Nova Scotia, in the early 1960s, the acceptable terms my community used to describe ourselves were either Negrowith a majuscule N, befitting our dignity, or Coloured, also oft-capitalizedand for the same reason. By the later 1960s, however, Black became the more fashionable and politically advanced descriptor, which caused some conniption, especially for those Black Nova Scotians who were part-Caucasian or part-Indigenous (or both), and who deemed themselves Coloured. Nevertheless, Black became de rigueur, and it has retained its significance. (However, capitalization of black as either noun or adjective is a matter best left, I think, to poetic feel rather than political manifesto. I have let my conscienceand the contextdetermine my inclination.)

By the 1990s, African-Nova Scotian began to become the popular denomination, and governments have consecrated it as such. In 1991, I advanced the term Africadianto designate black people arising from the historical communities of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, to distinguish our culture and our three-century-long presence from the originally offshore histories and cultures of Black Newcomers. Governments and universities also utilize the term Indigenous Black to achieve the same distinction: to recognize that the historical, Africadian population has endured aeons of slavery first and segregation later that merit current attempts at uplift, programs not necessarily required by African-heritage Newcomers.

Untold thousands of Africadians have Indigenous (Cherokee and Mikmaq, in my instance) and/or African-American and/or West Indian roots. But what do Africadians call themselves as a down-home slangy dubbing? Simple: Scotians. (Sometimes writtenpronouncedfully as Nofaskoshans.) And the term may be accidentally more correct than its inventors realize: Scotia is Latinized Greek (skotos) for darkness.

I employ all of the aforementioned epithets at different times throughout the memoir. (The context determines the usage.) But I am, at last, myself: Africadianand Afro-Mtis. Period.

P.S. I sometimes do not bother with standard, British orthography or grammar. When you happen upon such moments, the apparent typo may, in fact, constitute deliberate error.

Thousands of Africadians are also Afro-Mtisa term that foregrounds our Indigenous heritage. It is not to be confused with the mainly European/Caucasian-derived Mtis Nation of Ontario, the Prairies, and British Columbia. We possess our own culture, of which we areat long lastproud.

Where to begin to chronicle my beginnings? It has to be herein this dreamfrom October 2020, which I experienced as I was editing this memoir. I recognized the truth of the dream immediately, and that is why I narrate it here.

In the dream, Im my current agesixty, and my father, William Lloyd Clarke, is likely seventy, the age at which he passed away in 2005. Im standing in the bedroom that he shares with his second wifeIll call her Pammy, who is likely sixty-something, and whom I never accepted, liked, or loved, but only tolerated (for I could not see how she could replace my mother, Geraldine). Though Pammy is also deceased, she is alive in my dream, but leaves the marital bedroom so that my father and I can speak. I am standing, waiting for him to apologize, to say that he is sorry for his role in the splitting up of his firstand my birthfamily. He is dressed conservatively as usuala shirt and tie under a V-neck sweater, and he does begin to apologize, saying, Sonjust as Ive wished (forever); and as he relates his regret, I cannot restrain the dam-burst of tears that erupts from my eyes, and I collapseover the heap of my books, all spread about me, which I know, suddenly, have all been written in yearning for his apology and his acceptance.