31 Facts About Dionne Brand

Dionne Brand was Toronto's third Poet Laureate from September 2009 to November 2012 and first Black Poet Laureate.

Dionne Brand was admitted to the Order of Canada in 2017 and has won the Governor General's Award for Poetry, the Trillium Prize for Literature, the Pat Lowther Award for Poetry, the Harbourfront Writers' Prize, and the Toronto Book Award.

Dionne Brand graduated from Naparima Girls' High School in San Fernando, Trinidad, in 1970 and emigrated to Canada.

Dionne Brand attended the University of Toronto and earned a BA degree in 1975 and later attained an MA in Philosophy of Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in 1989.

Dionne Brand has held a number of academic positions, including:.

Dionne Brand explores intergenerational trauma and post memory in her piece A Map to A Door of No Return.

Dionne Brand begins A Map to the Door of No Return by recounting her long-standing struggle with her grandfather to remember where their ancestors were from.

Dionne Brand describes this moment of recognition as reaching the door of no return; a place where our ancestors departed one world for another.

Dionne Brand is intentional to note that her desire only came into full effect when she was denied knowledge of her ancestry.

Contrary to Frantz Fanon's theory that the pivotal moment in a Black child's life is the moment when they come in contact with the white world and are confronted with the full weight of their blackness, Dionne Brand's awakening was not dependent on the white world.

Dionne Brand's metaphors help elaborate and emphasize her thoughts, and the understanding of the door.

Dionne Brand sees racism as a powerful tool to censor oppositional voices and disagrees with the conception of racism as isolated or unusual.

The title of the book indicates that Dionne Brand is in conversation with writers of the Black Diaspora, namely Derek Walcott.

Dionne Brand is calling out Walcott, who in her opinion plays to the belief that "colonization brought civilization, brought culture".

Dionne Brand confidently posits herself as the antidote to Walcott: he is the "Black colonial" who through literature dances with oppression instead of fighting it.

The cover plays with the softness of themes such as love and desire but the hardened fist is there as a reminder of the difficult politics Dionne Brand is confronting in this volume.

Dionne Brand did not conform to any of these expectations, as can be seen in her later work too.

Dionne Brand focuses on the summer beach house belonging to "rich whites" that was cleaned by their mother, the daughter of her overseer grandfather.

In "This Body For Itself", in Bread Out of Stone, Dionne Brand discusses the way the black female body is represented.

Dionne Brand asserts that in male authored texts, the black female body is often portrayed as motherly or virginal.

Dionne Brand wrote many of the poems in her fifth book of poetry, Chronicles of the Hostile Sun, in response to the United States military occupation of Grenada.

Dionne Brand had been living in Grenada and working for a Canadian non-profit organization when the United States invasion of the island took place.

Dionne Brand was arrested and assassinated in the days leading up to the invasion in 1983.

Dionne Brand made a number of documentaries with NFB's feminist-film production unit, Studio D, from 1989 to 1996.

Brand did not have pointed interest in filmmaking until an opportunity arose to consult on a documentary about racism at Studio D A white filmmaker was the lead on the project and after meeting with her for several days, Brand decided she did not want to be a part of the film.

Dionne Brand told the Studio that she would be willing to "do something about Black women from their point of view," which resulted in Long Time Comin.

Dionne Brand warns against state-sponsored images of multiculturalism, stating that true diversity means people having "equal access to equal justice, equal jobs, equal education".

Sturgess says Dionne Brand's work is 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".

Openly identifying as a lesbian, Dionne Brand is vocal against the discrimination of the LGBT community.

Dionne Brand is a founder of the newspaper Our Lives, the first Canadian newspaper devoted to Black women.

Dionne Brand is a past chair of the Women's Issues Committee of the Ontario Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, and does work with immigrant organizations around Toronto.