From Canaan to Vancouver: Wayde Compton's Provocative New Book on Race and Identity

A book review / book launch coverage of After Canaan from local Vancouver author, poet and teacher, Wayde Compton.  

Text by: Phoebe Yu

Edited by: Mike Lee

Published: December 14, 2010, The Source

Celebrated home-grown poet, writer and teacher Wayde Compton recently launched his new book, After Canaan, at the Brickhouse, a little watering hole nestled south of Chinatown.  Fresh from Arsenault Pulp Press, Compton's first non-fiction work features a collection of essays on race, writing and region.  He provides a provocative critique on the entrapment of society to racial paradigms and seeks to overturn assumptions on race, setting the stage for the emancipation of society from a racialized mode of thinking.

Compton carefully chose the title of his book by referencing a popular belief among slaves in the pre-Civil War United States that Canada, like the Biblical land of Canaan, was the Promised Land and their key to freedom.  Compton's own research, however, shows that though slavery was outlawed in the British Empire, racist attitudes nevertheless prevailed among the ordinary people and ruling elites of the time.

Charlie Demers of Arsenault Press officially kicked off the launched by providing a short introduction of Compton, "the softest-spoken non-mute you'll ever meet," and After Canaan.  In the prologue to the highlight of the evening, Compton first thanked those who have helped make the book's publication possible, and made an impassioned plea to the audience to buy the book especially "in a time of successive regimes that try to kill culture."  Compton followed up by treating the audience to a reading of one of his essays from the book, "The Repossession of Fred Booker," which was written in memory of a dear friend.

There are seven essays in After Canaan and each tackles, in its own way, the issues of race, identity and black history in Western Canada.  Some deal with the deconstruction of language used in racial contexts, such as in "Phenetecizing versus Passing," "Obama and Language" and in "Turntable Poetry, Mixed-Race and Schizophonophilia."  Others are historical narratives that attempt to capture a lost identity and elusive past, like in "Seven Routes to Hogan's Alley."

Compton's essays masterfully blend the personal with the political.  His own accounts of dealing with his struggles of history, race and identity share a degree of commonality with followers of his work.  June, one of the event attendees who is also Métis, said that Compton's thoughts on race and identity politics are interesting and they resound with her.

"It is hard to fit into one racial category since natives are prejudiced against Métis because they are [part] white," she said.  "But they are not completely 'white' either so it is hard to fit into one specific racial mold."

In contemporary society, race is an issue that can take on many meanings, depending on the context in which it is discussed.  Compton warns of the dangers associated with not talking about the more contentious aspects of race, what has happened to us, and how we got here.

"We are defined by race and it is a social reality," said Compton.  Whether or not we are able to free ourselves from defining personal identity in terms of race remains to be seen.  However, Compton's efforts to bring this discussion out in the open are a good start.