A Map to the Door of No Return

NOW IN ITS FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, DIONNE BRAND'S GROUNDBREAKING A MAP TO THE DOOR OF NO RETURN HAS EMERGED AS A MODERN CLASSIC, A HIGHLY INFLUENTIAL EXPLORATION OF 'BEING' IN THE BLACK DIASPORA. WITH A NEW PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR, AND AN AFTERWORD BY SAIDIYA HARTMAN.

Since its first publication in 2001, in Canada, Dionne Brand's groundbreaking exploration of being in the Black diaspora, A Map to the Door of No Return, has emerged as a modern classic. The door, in Brand's iconic schema, represents the point of rupture where the ancestors of the Black diaspora departed one world for another: the place where all names were forgotten, and all beginnings recast. "This door," writes Brand, "is not mere physicality. It is a spiritual location . . . Since leaving was never voluntary, return was, and still may be, an intention, however deeply buried. There is as it says no way in; no return."

Through shards of history, memoir, lyrical investigation, and the unwritten experience of so many descendants of those who passed through the door, Brand constructs a map of this indelible region, culminating in an enduring expression, both definitive and seeking, of what it is to live, think, and create in the wake of colonization.