A Map to the Door of No Return by Dionne Brand

“One enters a room and history follows; one enters a room and history precedes. History is already seated in the chair in the empty room when one arrives.”

Now entering its third decade in print, Dionne Brand’s groundbreaking A Map to the Door of No Return has emerged as a modern classic, a disquisition on ‘being’ in the Black diaspora. With a new afterword by Saidiya Hartman.

“This book is a world, a triumph of art and thought, a compass for the ages.” —David Chariandy

A Map to the Door of No Return explores the relevance and nature of identity and belonging in a culturally diverse and rapidly changing world. It is a brilliantly insightful, beautifully nuanced and poetic book of discovery that, in the twenty years since its publication, has become a classic work of nonfiction about borders and belonging, migration and identity.

Drawing on ideas about cartography, travel, African ancestry, the construction of histories and politics, philosophies, and literatures, Dionne Brand also examines her own narratives of childhood in the Caribbean, and journeys across the North American landscape to sketch the shifting boundaries of “home” and “nation.”

The title, A Map to the Door of No Return, refers both to a place in the imagination and a point in history—the so-called Middle Passage, which imbues the quest for identity and place with profound meaning and resonance in our age of heterogenous identities.

A stunningly original work that now takes its place as a foundational text and a modern classic.

DIONNE BRAND’s literary credentials are legion. Her novel, Theory was a Globe and Mail Best Book. Her poetry collection, The Blue Clerk, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won the Trillium Book Prize. Her collection Ossuaries won the Griffin Poetry Prize, and other collections have won the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Trillium Book Award and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Among her novels, In Another Place, Not Here was selected as a NYT Book Review Notable Book and a Best Book by the Globe and Mail; At the Full and Change of the Moon was selected a Best Book by the LA Times; and What We All Long For won the Toronto Book Award. In 2006, Brand was awarded the Harbourfront Festival Prize for her contribution to the world of books and writing, and from 2009 to 2012 she served as Toronto’s Poet Laureate. In 2017, she was named to the Order of Canada. She lives in Toronto.

Author Residence: Toronto, ON

Author Hometown: Guayaguayare, Trinidad and Tobago