Dionne Brand



Dionne Brand (born January 7, 1953 Guayaguayare, Trinidad and Tobago) is a Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and documentarian. She was named Toronto's third Poet Laureate in September 2009.

Life
Dionne Brand graduated from Naparima Girls' High School in 1970, and immigrated to Canada, to attend the University of Toronto, where she earned a B.A. in 1975. Brand also holds a M.A. (1989) from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education - OISE. Currently Brand teaches at the University of Guelph.

Brand frequently explores themes of gender, race, sexuality and feminism in her writing. In "Bread Out of Stone", Brand uses personal experiences and strong metaphoric language to expose racism, white male domination, injustices and the moral hypocrisies of Canada with its own assessment as being "not like the United States" As a show of support of women solidarity, Brand has participated in many anthologies and writing opposing the violent killings of Black men and women and specifically pointing out the massacre of fourteen women in Montreal and the racism and inequality experienced by Aboriginal women of Canada, particularly Helen Betty Osborne's death in the Pas.

Despite the similarity of their names, she should not be confused with poet Di Brandt.

Academic career
Brand has held several prestigious academic positions, including:
 * Writer-in-Residence, University of Toronto (1990–1991)
 * Assistant Professor of English, University of Guelph (1992–1994)
 * Ruth Wynn Woodward Professor in Women's Studies, Simon Fraser University (2000–2002)
 * Writer-in-Residence, University of Guelph (2003–2004)
 * Distinguished Visiting Scholar and Writer-in-Residence, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York (2004–2005)
 * Distinguished Poet for the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Chair, Vancouver Island University (2006)
 * Program Faculty in the Writing Studio, Banff Centre (2007; 2009)
 * Brand is currently Professor of English at the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph where she also holds a University Research Chair

Writing
In Rivers Have Sources, Trees Have Roots (1986) Brand and co-author Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta interviewed a hundred people from the Canadian Native, Black, Chinese, and South Asian communities about their perspectives of racism and how it has impacted their lives. From these stories and recollections of childhood to workplace experiences, the authors critiqued the existence and commonality of racism, disparities and resistance. They argue that two themes exist where racism prevails in the lives of the interviewees and these themes are through "the culture of racism" and through the structural and institutional ways. Consequently, economic hardship, lack of employment and career choices and opportunities are some of the experiences identified by the minority, ethnic groups and immigrants.

Brand recognizes that there are also different forms of struggles and visions to combat racism. This book attempts to give each individual a voice, an opportunity to speak about their personal and immigration stories as part of a historical validation and as part of a third in a series of anti-racism literature. Women and men spoke of their anger, resentments, and complaints of racial tensions of abuse, isolation, staring, name calling and being treated as different and inferior. Brand addresses how racism is used as a powerful tool to censor oppositional voices and she opposes the media report that racism occurs in isolated cases or unusual crisis.

The use of personal experience and ancestral memory can be found in Brand's writing strategies such as in a short story fiction, "St. Mary Estate", which is taken from Brand's book, Sans Souci and Other Stories, pp. 360–366, Brand begins the chapter "Maps of Memory:  Places Revisited" by describing the colonial oppression that her fictional characters experienced in a place called "St. Mary Estate."

The narrator and her sister revisit the cocoa estate, the place of their birth and childhood and recall past experiences of racism and shame. The old place is filled with painful memories including the summer beach house that were used by rich 'white' people who the narrator refers to as "they" and whose big quarters were scrubbed  and cleaned by her father who works as the overseer slave. The narrator recalls the beach house was empty two months of the year forbidden for them to use.

Through the narrative, Brand illustrates the discrimination and poverty issues because the families were cramped into their barracks made of thin cardboards with newspapers walls. Brand also employs various stylistic devices including the use of repetitive language and the use of anger and obscene language to expose the poor segregated quarters of slave barracks, overseer's shack, and estate workers barracks that depict the physical, social and psychological degradation endured by the slaves who were denied the basic human rights and freedom.

Other topics addressed in her poetry and novels include sexual exploitation of African women, and what Brand refers to as "a pandemic scourging the Diaspora" and declares, "We are born thinking of travelling back" which is suggestive of the individual and historic travelling and returning as experienced by her ancestors. As Brand writes: "Listen, I am a Black woman whose of ancestors were brought to a new world laying tightly packed in ships.  Fifteen million of them survived the voyage, five million of them women; millions among them died, were killed, committed suicide in the middle passage."

Brand has received many awards and her ongoing intellectual contribution are appreciated by the Black communities and women who find inspiration in her social activism and her writing among other women writers of African descent as expressed by writer Myrian Chancy that she found "it possible ...to engage in personal/critical work which uncovers the connections between us as Black women at the same time as re-discovering that which has been kept from us: our cultural heritage, the language of our grandmothers, ourselves."

Critical reception
Many of the first critics and scholars to evaluate Brand's early work regularly framed her writing in discourses of Caribbean national and cultural identity and Caribbean literary theory. Barbadian poet and scholar Edward Kamau Brathwaite referred to Brand as "our first major exile female poet." Academic J. Edward Chamberlain argued that she is "a final witness to the experience of migration and exile" whose "literary inheritance is in some genuine measure West Indian, a legacy of [Derek] Walcott, Brathwaite and others." Their gesture toward a literal border crossing, from the Caribbean to Canada, speaks to the increasingly profound engagement with the idea of her own and others’ shifting locations, both literal and theoretical, evident in Brand's work.

Peter Dickinson argues that "Brand 'reterritorializes' … boundaries in her writing, (dis)placing or (dis)locating the national narrative of subjectivity … into the diaspora of cross-cultural, -racial, -gender, -class, and –erotic identifications." These profound shifts in the way Brand conceptualizes national and personal affiliations to and boundaries around Caribbean and Canadian locations speak to what Dickinson calls "the politics of location [which] cannot be separated from the politics of 'production and reception.'" Critic Leslie Sanders argues that, in her ongoing exploration of the notions of "here" and "there", Brand uses her own "statelessness" as a vehicle for entering "'other people's experience'" and "'other places.'" In Sanders’ words, "by becoming a Canadian writer, Brand is extending the Canadian identity in a way [Marshall] McLuhan would recognize and applaud." Her work, then, according to Dickinson, Sanders and others, has been instrumental in changing the way that Canadian literature is ultimately constituted. Nevertheless, Dickinson concedes, "Because Brand's 'here' is necessarily mediated, provisional, evanescent – in a word 'unlocatable' – her work remains marginal/marginalizable in academic discussions of Canadian literary canons."

In her book, Redefining the Subject: Sites of Play in Canadian Women's Writing, Charlotte Sturgess suggests that Brand employs a language—in the short story collection Sans Souci (1988) and the novel In Another Place, Not Here (1996), in particular—"through which identity emerges as a mobile, thus discursive, construct." Echoing Dickinson's theory that Brand's work both dislodges and disturbs the borders safeguarding narratives about fixed national identities, Sturgess argues that Brand's "work uses language strategically, as a wedge to split European traditions, forms and aesthetics apart; to drive them onto their own borders and contradictions." The work Brand's writing performs is, Sturgess insists, at least two-pronged: it "underline[s] the enduring ties of colonialism within contemporary society;" and it "investigates the very possibilities of Black, female self-representation in Canadian cultural space."

Speaking specifically of Brand's considerable body of poetry, Italian academic and theorist Franca Bernabei writes in the preamble to Luce ostinata/Tenacious Light (2007), the Italian-English selected anthology of Brand's poetry, that "Brand's poetic production reveals a remarkable variety of formal-stylistic strategies and semantic richness as well as the ongoing pursuit of a voice and a language that embody her political, affective, and aesthetic engagement with the human condition of the black woman—and, more exactly, all those oppressed by the hegemonic program of modernity." On the back cover of the same collection, editor and critic Constance Rooke calls Brand "one of the very best [poets] in the world today", and goes on to "compare her to [Pablo] Neruda or—in fiction—to [José] Saramago."

Scholarly Engagement
Many scholars have analyzed Dionne Brand's work. In his book Black Like Who?, Rinaldo Walcott includes two essays ("A Tough Geography": Towards a Poetics of Black Space(s) in Canada and "No Language is Neutral": The Politics of Performativity in M. Nourbese Philip's and Dionne Brand's Poetry) that deal with Dionne Brand's poetry and take up the overarching themes of her work. Brand herself had previously used a line from Derek Walcott to title her collection, No Language is Neutral (nominated for Governor General's award) in which she "uses language to disturb" in poetry that is filled with biographic meanings and ancestral references, including contemporary inequality issues and racism. As a Marxist and feminist, Brand believes that "by addressing real power can we begin to deal with racism", that is, engaging in both economic and political power.

Recognition
Brand's work has garnered multiple literary awards and honours and her contribution to literature has been recognized by both Canadian and international literary communities:


 * 1990: Shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Poetry for No Language is Neutral (1990)
 * 1997: Won the Governor General's Award for Poetry and the Trillium Book Award for Land to Light On (1997)
 * 1997: Shortlisted for the Chapters Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Trillium Book Award for In Another Place, Not Here (1996)
 * 1998: In Another Place, Not Here (1996) designated a New York Times Notable Book
 * 1999: At the Full and Change of the Moon (1999) designated a Los Angeles Times Notable Book
 * 1999: Included in The Village Voice's second annual "Writers on the Verge" literary supplement
 * 2003: Won the Pat Lowther Award for thirsty (2002)
 * 2003: Shortlisted for the City of Toronto Book Award, the Trillium Book Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize for thirsty (2002)
 * 2006: Won the City of Toronto Book Award for What We All Long For (2005)
 * 2006: Won the Harbourfront Festival Prize in recognition of her important contribution to literature
 * 2006: Shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Poetry and the Trillium Book Award for Inventory (2006)
 * 2006: Made a Fellow of the Academies for Arts, Humanities, and Sciences of Canada (formerly the Royal Society of Canada)
 * 2007: Shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award for Inventory (2006)
 * 2009: Appointed Poet Laureate of Toronto
 * 2011: Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize for Ossuaries

Poetry

 * 1978: Fore Day Morning: Poems. Toronto: Khoisan Artists, ISBN 0920662021
 * 1979: Earth Magic. Toronto: Kids Can Press, ISBN 0919964257
 * 1982: Primitive Offensive. Toronto: Williams-Wallace International Inc., ISBN 08879501214
 * 1983: Winter Epigrams and Epigrams to Ernesto Cardenal in Defense of Claudia. Toronto: Williams-Wallace International Inc., ISBN 0676971016
 * 1984: Chronicles of the Hostile Sun. Toronto: Williams-Wallace, ISBN 0887950337
 * 1990: No Language is Neutral. Toronto: Coach House Press, ISBN 088910395X; McClelland & Stewart, 1998, ISBN 0771016468
 * 1997: Land to Light On. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, ISBN 077101645X
 * 2002: thirsty. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, ISBN 0771016441 (shortlisted for the 2003 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize)
 * Excerpt from thirsty, online at CBC Words at Large
 * 2006: Inventory. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, ISBN 9780771016622
 * Excerpt from Inventory, online at CBC Words at Large
 * 2010: Ossuaries - 2010 (McClelland & Stewart, ISBN 9780771017360) (shortlisted for the 2011 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize and Pat Lowther Award)

Fiction

 * 1988: Sans Souci and Other Stories. Stratford, ON: Williams-Wallace, ISBN 0887950728 and ISBN 0887950736
 * 1996: In Another Place, Not Here. Toronto: Knopf Canada, ISBN 0394281586
 * 1999: At the Full and Change of the Moon. Toronto: Knopf Canada, ISBN 0394281586
 * 2005: What We All Long For. Toronto: Knopf Canada, ISBN 9780676976939

Non-Fiction

 * 1986: Rivers have sources, trees have roots: speaking of racism (with Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta). Toronto: Cross Cultural Communications Centre, ISBN 0969106068
 * 1991: No Burden to Carry: Narratives of Black Working Women in Ontario, 1920s-1950s (with Lois De Shield). Toronto: Women's Press, ISBN 0889611637
 * 1994: Imagination, Representation, and Culture
 * 1994: We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women's History (with Peggy Bristow, Linda Carty, Afua P. Cooper, Sylvia Hamilton, and Adrienne Shadd). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ISBN 0802059430 and ISBN 0802068812
 * 1994: Bread Out of Stone: Recollections on Sex, Recognitions, Race, Dreaming and Politics. Toronto: Coach House Press, ISBN 0889104921; Toronto: Vintage, 1998, ISBN 067697158X
 * 2001: A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging. Toronto: Random House Canada, ISBN 9780385258920 and ISBN 0385258925
 * 2008: A Kind of Perfect Speech: The Ralph Gustafson Lecture Malaspina University-College 19 October 2006. Nanaimo, BC: Institute for Coastal Research Publishing, ISBN 9781896886053

Edited

 * 2007: The Journey Prize Stories: The Best of Canada's New Stories. (with Caroline Adderson and David Bezmozqis) comps. and eds. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, ISBN 6771095619 and ISBN 9780771095610

Film

 * Older, Stronger, Wiser. Dir. Claire Prieto. Assoc. Dir. Dionne Brand. (Part I, Women at the Well trilogy). National Film Board of Canada, Studio D, 1989
 * Sisters in the Struggle. Dirs. Dionne Brand and Ginny Stikeman. (Part II, Women at the Well trilogy). National Film Board of Canada, Studio D, 1991
 * Long Time Comin'. Dir. Dionne Brand. Perf. Faith Nolan and Grace Channer. (Part III, Women at the Well trilogy). National Film Board of Canada, Studio D, 1991
 * Listening for Something: Adrienne Rich and Dionne Brand in Conversation. Dir. Dionne Brand. National Film Board of Canada, Studio D, 1996
 * Beyond Borders: Arab Feminists Talk About Their Lives ... East and West. Dir. Jennifer Kawaja. Narr. Dionne Brand. National Film Board of Canada, 1999
 * Under One Sky: Arab Women in North America Talk About the Hijab. Dir. Jennifer Kawaja. Narr. Dionne Brand. National Film Board of Canada, 1999
 * Borderless: A Docu-Drama About the Lives of Undocumented Workers. Dir. Min Sook Lee. Narr. Dionne Brand. KAIROS Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, 2006.

Selected Anthologies

 * Amin, Nuzhat et al. Canadian Woman Studies:  An Introductory Reader.  Toronto:  Inanna Publications and Education Inc.  1999.
 * Gorjup, Branko, and Francesca Valente, eds. Luce ostinata / Tenacious Light. Ravenna, ITA: A. Longo Editore snc, 2007.
 * Sanders, Leslie, comp. and ed. Fierce Departures: The Poetry of Dionne Brand. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009.

Anthologies

 * Agard, John, and Grace Nichols, eds. A Caribbean Dozen: Poems From Caribbean Poets. London: Walker Books, 1994.
 * Atwood, Margaret, and Robert Weaver, comps. and eds. The New Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 1995; rpt. 1997.
 * Bennett, Donna, and Russell Brown, eds. A New Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2002.
 * Besner, Neil, Deborah Schnitzer, and Alden Turner, eds. Uncommon Wealth: An Anthology of Poetry in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
 * Black, Ayanna, ed. Fiery Spirits and Voices: Canadian Writers of African Descent. Toronto: HarperPerennialCanada, 2000.
 * Burnett, Paula. ed. The Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse in English. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin Books, 1986.
 * Chong, Denise, ed. The Penguin Anthology of Stories by Canadian Women. Toronto: Penguin, 1997; rpt. 1998.
 * Cook, Meira, ed. Writing Lovers: Reading Canadian Love Poetry by Women. Montreal, Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005.
 * Dabydeen, Cyril, ed. A Shapley Fire: Changing the Literary Landscape. Oakville, ON: Mosaic Press, 1987.
 * DeShazer, Mary K., ed. Longman Anthology of Women's Literature. New York: Longman, 2001.
 * Elton, Sarah, ed. City of Words: Toronto Through Her Writers' Eyes. Toronto: Cormorant Books, 2009.
 * Geddes, Gary, ed. 15 Canadian Poets X 3. 4th ed. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2001.
 * Glave, Thomas, ed. Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2008.
 * Head, Harold, ed. Canada in Us Now: The First Anthology of Black Poetry and Prose in Canada. Toronto: NC Press, 1976.
 * Hutcheon, Linda, and Marion Richardson, eds. Other Solitudes: Canadian Multicultural Fictions. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 1980; rpt. Routledge, 1984; rpt. Oxford University Press, 1990.
 * Karpinski, Eva C., and Ian Lea, eds. Pens of Many Colours: A Canadian Reader. 3rd ed. Toronto: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Canada Inc., 1993.
 * Lake, Katherine, and Nairne Holtzed, eds. No Margins: Writing Canadian Fiction in Lesbian. Toronto: Insomniac Press, 2007.
 * Mordecai, Pamela, and Betty Wilson, eds. Her True-True Name: An Anthology of Women's Writing from the Caribbean. Oxford, UK: Heinemann, 1989.
 * Morrell, Carol, ed. Grammar of Dissent: Poetry and Prose by Claire Harris, M. Nourbese Philip and Dionne Brand. Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions, 1994.
 * Ondaatje, Michael, comp. and ed. From Ink Lake: Canadian Stories Selected by Michael Ondaatje. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1995.
 * Parini, Jay, ed. The Wadsworth Anthology of Poetry. Boston, Massachusetts: Thompson Wadsworth, 2006.
 * Queyras, Sina, ed. and intro. Open Fields: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets. New York: Persea Books, 2005.
 * Ramraj, Victor J., ed. Concert of Voices: An Anthology of World Writing in English. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press Ltd., 1995; rpt. 2001.
 * Roberts, Tammy, et al. The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2002.
 * Rooke, Constance, ed. Writing Away: The PEN Canada Travel Anthology. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1994.
 * Stott, Jon C., Raymond E. Jones, and Rick Bowers, eds. The Harbrace Anthology of Literature. 4th ed. Toronto: Thompson Nelson, 2006.
 * Sullivan, Rosemary, and Mark Levene, eds. Short Fiction: An Anthology. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2003.
 * Sullivan, Rosemary, ed. The Oxford Book of Short Stories by Canadian Women in English. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 1999.
 * Thesen, Sharon, ed. The New Long Poem Anthology. 2nd ed. Toronto: Talonbooks, 1999; rpt. 2001.
 * ---, comp. and ed. The Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology: A Selection of the 2003 Shortlist. Toronto: Anansi Press, 2003.
 * Thomas, Joan, and Heidi Harms, eds. Turn of the Story: Canadian Short Fiction on the Eve of the Millennium. Toronto: Anansi, 1999.
 * Uppal, Priscilla, ed. 20 Canadian Poets Take on the World. Toronto: Exile, 2009.

Articles

 * Ball, John C. "White City, Black Ancestry: The Immigrant's Toronto in the Stories of Austin Clarke and Dionne Brand." Open Letter, 8.8 (Winter 1994): 9-19.
 * Bentley, D.M.R. "'Me and the City That's Never Happened Before': Dionne Brand in Toronto." Canadian Architexts: Essays on Literature and Architecture in Canada, 1759-2005. Canadian Poetry Press. 26 Nov 2006. 
 * Brathwaite, Edward Kamau. "Dionne Brand's Winter Epigrams." Canadian Literature, 105 (1985): 18-30.
 * ---. "Dionne Brand's Global Intimacies: Rethinking Affective Citizenship." University of Toronto Quarterly, 76.3 (Summer 2007): 990-1006.
 * ---. "Postcolonial Gothic: Ghosts, Iron and Salt in Dionne Brand's At the Full and Change of the Moon." Ebony, Ivory & Tea. Eds. Zbigniew Bialas, Krzysztof Kowalczyk-Twarowski. Katowice, Poland: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Slaskiego, 2004. 211-227.
 * Casas, Maria Caridad. "Orality and the Body in the Poetry of Lillian Allen and Dionne Brand: Towards an Embodied Social Semiotics." ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 33.2 (2002): 7-32.
 * Clarke, George E. "Harris, Philip, Brand: Three Authors in Search of Literary Criticism." Journal of Canadian Studies 35.1 (2000): 161-189.
 * Cook, Meira. "The Partisan Body: Performance and the Female Body in Dionne Brand's No Language is Neutral." Open Letter 9.2 (1995): 88-91.
 * Cuder-Dominguez, Pilar. "African Canadian Writing and the Narration(s) of Slavery." Essays on Canadian Writing 79 (2003): 55-74.
 * Dalleo, Raphael. "Post-Grenada, Post-Cuba, Postcolonial: Rethinking Revolutionary Discourse in Dionne Brand's In Another Place, Not Here." Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 12.1 (2010): 64-73.
 * ---. Caribbean Literature and the Public Sphere: From the Plantation to the Postcolonial. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011.
 * Daurio, Beverley. "The Language of Resistance: In her Poetry, Dionne Brand is Rewriting History in a Way that Saves our Humanity." Books in Canada 19.7 (1990): 13-16.
 * Dickinson, Peter. "In Another Place, Not Here: Dionne Brand's Politics of (Dis)Location." Painting the Maple: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Construction of Canada. Eds. Veronica Strong-Boag et al. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 1998. 113-129.
 * Forster, Sophia. "'Inventory is Useless Now but Just to Say': The Poetics of Ambivilence in Dionne Brand's Land to Light On." Studies in Canadian Literature/Etudes en Littrature Canadienne 27.2 (2002): 160-182.
 * Fraser, Kaya. "Language to Light On: Dionne Brand and the Rebellious Word." Studies in Canadian Literature/Etudes en Littrature Canadienne 30.1 (2005): 291-308.
 * Freiwald, Bina. "Cartographies of Be/Longing: Dionne Brand's In Another Place, Not Here." Mapping Canadian Cultural Space: Essays on Canadian Literature. Ed. Danielle Schaub. Jerusalem: Magnus, 1998.
 * Garvey, Johanna X.K. "'The Place She Miss': Exile, Memory, and Resistance in Dionne Brand's Fiction." Callaloo: A Journal of African-American and African Arts and Letters 26.2 (2003): 486-503.
 * Georgis, Dina. "Mother Nations and the Persistence of 'Not Here.'" Canadian Woman Studies 20 (2000): 27-34.
 * Gingell, Susan. "Returning to Come Forward: Dionne Brand Confronts Derek Walcott." Journal of West Indian Literature 6.2 (1994): 43-53.
 * Goldman, Marlene. "Mapping the Door of No Return: Deterritorialization and the Work of Dionne Brand." Canadian Literature 182 (2004): 13-28.
 * Hunter, Lynette. "After Modernism: Alternative Voices in the Writings of Dionne Brand, Claire Harris and Marlene Philip." University of Toronto Quarterly 62.2 (1992–1993): 256-281.
 * Johnson, Erica L. "Unforgetting Trauma: Dionne Brand's Haunted Histories." Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 2.1 (2004): 27. 
 * Keefer, Janice Kulyk. "Introduction/Introduzione." Luce ostinata/Tenacious Light. Eds. Branko Gorjup and Francesca Valente. Ravenna, ITA: A. Longo Editore snc, 2007. 28-47.
 * Luft, Joanna. "Elizete and Verlia Go to Toronto: Caribbean Immigrant Sensibilities at 'Home' and Overseas in Dionne Brand's In Another Place, Not Here." Essays on Canadian Writing 77 (2002): 26-49.
 * Mason, Jody. "Searching for the Doorway: Dionne Brand's thirsty." University of Toronto Quarterly: A Canadian Journal of the Humanities 75.2 (2006): 784-800.
 * McCallum, Pamela, and Christian Olbey. "Written in the Scars: History, Genre, and Materiality in Dionne Brand's In Another Place, Not Here." Essays on Canadian Writing 68 (1999): 159-182.
 * McCutcheon, Mark A. "She skin black as water: The Movement of liquid imagery in Dionne Brand's In Another Place, Not Here." Post Identity 3.2 (2002): 133-52. 
 * Morrell, Carol. "Introduction." Grammar of Dissent: Poetry and Prose by Claire Harris, M. Nourbese Philip, and Dionne Brand. Comp. and ed. Carol Morrell. Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane, 1994. 9-24.
 * Nuzhat, Abbas. "Dionne's Brand of Writing." Herizons 13.3 (1999): 18-22.
 * Priestly, Brown, and Sylvia M. "Dionne Brand: The New Wave Writing that Hates Suffering." Open Letter 8.9 (1994): 97-102.
 * Quigley, Ellen. "Picking the Deadlock of Legitimacy: Dionne Brand's 'Noise Like the World Cracking.'" Canadian Literature 186 (2005): 48-67.
 * Renk, Kathleen J. "'Her Words Are Like Fire': The Storytelling Magic of Dionne Brand." ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 27.4 (1996): 97-111.
 * Sanders, Leslie. "Dionne Brand: (impossible de) prendre terre." ellipse 59 (1998): 57-70.
 * ---. "Dionne Brand: (No) Land to Light On." Articulating Gender: An Anthology Presented to Professor Shirin Kudchedkar. Ed. Anjali Bhelande and Mala Pandurang. New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2000.
 * ---. "'I Am Stateless Anyway': The Poetry of Dionne Brand." The Zora Neale Hurston Forum 3.2 (1989): 19-29.
 * ---. "Introduction." Fierce Departures: The Poetry of Dionne Brand. Comp. and ed. Leslie Sanders. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009. ix-xv.
 * Sarbadhikary, Krishna. "Recovering History: The Poems of Dionne Brand." Intersexions: Issues of Race and Gender in Canadian Women's Writing. Ed. Coomi S. Vivaina and Barbara Goddard. New Delhi: Creative, 1996. 59-63.
 * Saul, Joanne. "'In the Middle of Becoming': Dionne Brand's Historical Vision." Canadian Woman Studies 23.2 (2004): 59-63.
 * Sharpe, Jenny. "The Original Paradise." Transition 62 (1993): 48-57.
 * Smyth, Heather. "Sexual Citizenship and Caribbean-Canadian Fiction: Dionne Brand's In Another Place, Not Here and Shani Mootoo's Cereur Blooms at Night." ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 30.2 (1999): 141-160.
 * ---. "'The Being Together of Strangers': Dionne Brand's Politics of Difference and the Limits of Multicultural Discourse." Studies in Canadian Literature 33.1 (2008): 272-290.
 * Sturgess, Charlotte. "Dionne Brand's Short Stories: Warring Forces and Narrative Poetics." Anglophonia: French Journal of English Studies 1 (1997): 155-160.
 * ---. "Spirits and Transformation in Dionne Brand's Sans Souci and Other Stories." Etudes Canadiennes/Canadian Studies: Revue Interdisciplinaire des Etudes Canadiannes en France 35 (1993): 223-229.
 * Thomas, H. Nigel. "Commentary on the Poetry of Dionne Brand." Kola: A Black Literary Magazine 1.1 (1987): 51-61.
 * Walcott, Rinaldo. "'Tough Geography': Towards a Poetics of Black Space(s) in Canada." West Coast Line 22/33.1 (1997): 38-51.
 * ---, and Leslie Sanders. "At the Full and Change of CanLit: An Interview with Dionne Brand." Canadian Woman Studies 20.2 (2000): 22-26.
 * Wiens, Jason. "'Language Seemed to Split in Two': National Ambivalence(s) and Dionne Brand's No Language is Neutral." Essays on Canadian Writing 70 (2000): 81-102.
 * Zackodnik, Teresa. "'I Am Blackening in My Way': Identity and Place in Dionne Brand's No Language is Neutral." Essays on Canadian Writing 57 (1995): 194-211.


 * Brand, Dionne. "Bread out of Stone,"  In Language In Her Eye, Ed. Libby Scheier, Sarah Sheard and Eleanor Wachtel.  Toronto:  Coach House Press.  1990.
 * Brand, Dionne. No Language is Neutral.   Toronto:  Coach House Press.  1990.
 * Brand, Dionne. Rivers Have Sources, Trees Have Roots:  Speaking of Racism (1986) with Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta.  Toronto:  Cross Communication Centre 1986.
 * Brand, Dionne.  "St. Mary Estate," in Pens of Many Colours:  A Canadian Reader (1993) Ed. Eva C. Karpinski and Ian Lea.  Toronto:  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Canada Inc. 1993.
 * Brand, Dionne.  "Just Rain, Bacolet"


 * Kamboureli, Smaro. Making A Difference:  Canadian Multicultual Literature.  Toronto:  Oxford University Press.  1996.