The unprecedented election for president of an African American south of the border probably looked to many like the culmination of a grand process of inclusion. African Americans, the story goes, can now see their efforts for civil rights and participation in the American Dream as embodied in Barack Obama. The struggle is over and […] More »

In many different parts of the world wars are fought by men and women and, unfortunately, sometimes with children as well. Usually led into guerrilla regiments out of abject desperation or because they were captured, these children are commanded to commit the most heinous of acts. They kill, they loot, and, in the meantime, they […] More »

When civil war between representatives of south Sudan and the government — or north Sudan — erupted in the early 80s, the debris took the form of mass displacement, thousands upon thousands of southern Sudanese leaving their villages that had been ravaged by government-financed militia. Among the unhappy travellers were newly orphaned young males, the […] More »

Ian Brown’s The Boy in the Moon had already achieved a mythic status long before it was ever ready for public eyes. It was this insiders’ rumour, the much anticipated, nagging project that was going to blow away everything the Globe and Mail feature writer had ever written previously.  As far back as 2007, the […] More »

The story of Africans being brought to the Americas, mainly in bondage, is well known. The transatlantic slave trade has been exhaustively mined and narrated and, if the plot is misunderstood, one only needs to peruse the history books for clarity. We know relatively little, though, about African-Americans and their voyages back to the other […] More »