Review: Sylvia D. Hamilton’s And I Alone Escaped to Tell You

Sylvia D. Hamilton’s And I Alone Escaped to Tell You stuns readers with its beautiful poetry and staggering content. It examines the atrocities faced by early Black Nova Scotians, and the systemic racism and oppression still prevalent today. With strong diction, powerful imagery and an array of poetic forms, And I Alone Escaped to Tell You is a true work of art. Hamilton’s breath-taking intertwining of poetry and historical fact inspires the desire to change amongst her readership, providing an education that motivates atonement.

And I Alone Escaped to Tell You reveals deliberate attempts to frame Canada as a safe haven from slavery, typified by the narrative of the underground railway. Peggy Bristow states “this kind of denial is pervasive throughout Canadian society and continues to present impediments to the development of an African Canadian historiography.” Hamilton’s poems demonstrate that the ‘true north strong and free’ was in fact a slave society that engaged in the selling and trading of African peoples as property, and creates a voice for African Canadians who have had their struggles concealed for generations. For example, she includes, verbatim the following newspaper ad: “On Saturday next, at twelve o’clock, will be sold on the Halifax Beach, two hogshead of rum, three of sugar and two well-grown Negro girls, aged fourteen and twelve, to the highest bidder” (14).

Hamilton interweaves themes of history and memory, grounding overlooked archival material in her poetry. Similar to Shalan Joudry’s Generations Re-Merging, Hamilton tells the story of peoples forcibly ripped from their previous ways of life, and abused by colonial powers. Hamilton educates her readership and evokes emotion through her words:

We had our own names

a past a present.

We worked we loved.

Sang songs to the wind

prayed to our Gods.

We did not know the future

would not be ours (9)

And I Alone Escaped to Tell You exposes readers to uncomfortable truths, offering a narrative that is thought provoking, emotional, and rarely taught in public schools. Sylvia D. Hamilton has made it her life’s work to provide an honest historiography for African Canadians through filmmaking, visual arts, and, with this volume, published poetry. Hamilton’s work is painfully beautiful and truly productive.

Works Cited

Bristow, Peggy, et al. Introduction. We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women's History. By Bristow. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. 3-12. Print.

Hamilton, Sylvia. And I Alone Escaped to Tell You. Kentville: Gaspereau Press, 2014. Print.

--by Benjamin Lord, with input from Monica Grasse, Sharisse LeBurn, and Molly Strickland.  

Review: Shalan Joudry’s Generations Re-Merging

Gaspereau Press 2014

Generations Re-Merging, Shalan Joudry’s debut book of poetry, takes readers on a “journey through a thick terrain” (9). Through the lens of nature Joudry explores complex issues facing the contemporary Mi’kmaw community. This book creates a model for understanding past injustices that have led to the current issues her cultures face.

        Although keyed to Joudry’s identity as a Mi’kmaw woman, this project evokes the work of other Atlantic Canadian poets like Tonja Gunvaldsen-Klaasen and Don McKay; the concept of "home" is central to all three. Don McKay notes in his essay Baler Twine, “Home, we may say, is the action of the inner life finding outer form; it is the settling of self into the world…To make a home is to establish identity with a primordial grasp.” Like McKay, “home” for Joudry is not as simple as four walls and roof. Rather, it is an identity formed through community and location, and when these are stripped away, so too is one’s sense of self.

            In the poem “Fabrics of the Land,” the places known so intimately by previous generations—who through that land re-newed themselves—have been turned into something unknowable:

                        … community buildings

            a new gas bar for economy

            a school sized up for autonomy

            a house for someone who has waited

            their share of poverty (53)

The poems “Geology of Houses” and “Where Wild Things Grow” demonstrate that without the homes of their ancestors, the Mi’kmaw people survive in insufficient and unnatural housing. For example "Geology of Houses" discusses how a structure can cut people off from both land and  community:

                        …keep me apart

            from all things earthy lustred

            i’m holding out

            holding in the steady vision

            glacially patient

            to live in something raw and weathered

            at least something more alive than this (24)

            Joudry’s intermittent use of words from the Mi’kmaw language parallels the healing she trusts can be brought about by reconnecting with nature, ceremony and community—all of which will lead to reclaiming the identity and culture of the Mi’kmaw.

            Despite some minor lapses in clarity, Joudry’s book works wonderfully as a whole. In the prologue, she urges readers:

However we get lost along the way, let us

rejoice in the healing steps that follow.

I hope we all continue to gather at the edge

of the woods where the generations

before us and after us

re-merge. (9)

           Generations Re-Merging demonstrates that Joudry is a true wordsmith, painting vivid pictures of both the natural and unnatural world in her search
        to know that beauty does not live without horror 
        and to be certain that in the waking edge of rage
        we are still beautiful 
        wild and with a special grace. (27)

Joudry, Shalan. Generations Re-Merging. Kentville: Gaspereau Press, 2014.

McKay, Don. “Baler Twine: Thoughts on Ravens, Home and Nature Poetry.” Vis a Vis: Fieldnotes on Poetry and Wilderness. Wolfville: Gaspereau Press, 2001. 23-24.

--by Sharisse LeBrun, with input from Molly Strickland, Monica Grasse and Ben Lord.