LibGuides: Reading Recommendations : Books and films for Black History Month

British Columbia Black History

Explore British Columbia's rich history with these resources:

BC Black History Awareness Society
A catalogue of information and sources of information pertaining to Blacks in BC (BC Black History Awareness Society)
Digital version of a bibliography project from 1978, plus additional information added recently.
Digital Museums Canada: BC's Black Pioneers

Recommended Books

Here are some really interesting books to read for Canada's Black History Month in February. Ebooks with the closed lock icon are available to current students, staff and faculty only. Print books are available for request and pickup by all library patrons.

African Canadian leadership : continuity, transition, and transformation by edited by Tamari Kitossa, Erica S. Lawson, and Philip S.S. Howard.
Call Number: HM1261 A37 2019
ISBN: 9781487523664
Publication Date: 2019
Drawing on original work from leading African-Canadian academics across Canada and internationally, this book critically explores the challenges, prospects, and ongoing achievements of Black leadership in Canadian as it responds to the needs of African Canadians. Despite diversity in nationality and patterns of immigration and settlement and other factors that differentiate African Canadians from each other, leadership has long been an important issue as African Canadians confront the uniform problem of anti-blackness in Canada.
Africville: the life and death of a Canadian Black community by Donald H. Clairmont; Dennis William Magill
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 1551300931
Publication Date: 1999-01-01
Being Black in the World by N. Chabani Manganyi
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 9781776144624
Publication Date: 2019
Being Black in the World by N. Chabani Manganyi
Call Number: DT763.6 M36 2019
ISBN: 9781776144624
Publication Date: 2019
Black Canadians: History, Experience, Social Conditions by Joseph Mensah; Joseph A. Mensah
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 1552660907
Publication Date: 2004
Black Canadians: History, Experience, Social Conditions by Joseph Mensah
Call Number: FC106 B6M45 2010
ISBN: 9781552663455
Publication Date: 2010
Black Life by Rinaldo Walcott; Idil Abdillahi
Call Number: FC106 B6W35 2019
ISBN: 9781927886212
Publication Date: 2019-06-04
BlackLife discloses the ongoing destruction of Black bodies and selves as enacted not simply by state structures, but beneath them into fundamentally modernist ideology that underlies thinking around migration and movement, as Black erasure and death are unveiled as a horrifically permeated acceptability throughout western culture.
The Blacks in Canada: A History by Robin W. Winks
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 077351631X
Publication Date: 1997
The Blacks in Canada: A History by Robin W. Winks
Call Number: FC106 B43W5 1997
ISBN: 0773516328
Publication Date: 2000
Hearing Enslaved Voices by Sophie White (Editor); Trevor Burnard (Editor)
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 9781000172614
Publication Date: 2020
This book focuses on alternative types of slave narratives, especially courtroom testimony, and interrogates how such narratives were produced, the societies (both those that were majority slave societies and those in which slaves were a distinct minority of the population) in which testimony was permitted, and the meanings that can be attached to such narratives.
North of the Color Line: migration and Black resistance in Canada, 1870-1955 by Sarah-Jane Mathieu
Call Number: FC106 B43M38 2010
ISBN: 9780807899397
Publication Date: 2010
North of the Color Line: migration and Black resistance in Canada, 1870-1955 by Sarah-Jane Mathieu
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 9780807899397
Publication Date: 2010
Policing Black Lives: state violence in Canada from slavery to the present by Robyn Maynard
Call Number: FC106 B6M39 2017
ISBN: 9781552669792
Publication Date: 2017-10-16
Racism and Anti-Racism in Canada by David Este (Editor); Liza Lorenzetti (Editor); Christa Sato (Editor)
Call Number: FC104 R33 2018
ISBN: 9781552668887
Publication Date: 2018-08-05
Race and Anti-Racism in Canada provides readers with a critical examination of how racism permeates Canadian society and articulates the complex ways to bring about equity and inclusion both individual and systemically.
The Skin We're In by Desmond Cole
Call Number: F1035 N3C65 2020
ISBN: 9780385686341
Publication Date: 2020-01-28
Puncturing once and for all the bubble of Canadian smugness and naïve assumptions of a post-racial nation, Cole chronicles just one year--2017--in the struggle against racism in this country.
They Call Me George: the untold story of black train porters and the birth of modern Canada by Cecil Foster
Call Number: HD8039 R362C246 2019
ISBN: 9781771962612
Publication Date: 2019-05-28
A historical work of non-fiction that chronicles the little-known stories of black railway porters-the so-called "Pullmen" of the Canadian rail lines.
Until we are free : reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada by edited by Rodney Diverlus, Sandy Hudson, and Syrus Marcus Ware.
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 9780889777361
Publication Date: 2020
Viola Desmond's Canada by Graham Reynolds
Call Number: FC106 B6R49 2016
ISBN: 9781552668375
Publication Date: 2016-01-31
Viola Desmond's Canada is groundbreaking book aimed at providing both general readers and students of Canadian history with a concise overview of the narrative of the Black experience in Canada.
Viola Desmond: her life and times by Graham Reynolds; Wanda Robson
Call Number: FC2346.26 D48R49 2018
ISBN: 9781773631233
Publication Date: 2018
Viola Desmond: Her Life and Times looks beyond the theatre incident is the first authoritative biography of this remarkable woman.

Recommended Films

Canada's National Film Board (NFB) has made a number of films available to the public. Check out their list of recommendations for Black History Month viewing (open to the public). UVic Students, Staff and Faculty can view the full NFB collection, as well.

Here are some highlights from the NFB's "Black Communities in Canada" collection that compliment the books recommended above:

Home Feeling: Struggle for a Community This feature documentary takes us to the heart of the Jane-Finch "Corridor" in the early 1980s. Covering six square blocks in Toronto's North York, the area readily evokes images of vandalism, high-density subsidized housing, racial tension, despair and crime. By focusing on the lives of several of the residents, many of them black or members of other visible minorities, the film provides a powerful view of a community that, contrary to its popular image, is working towards a more positive future.
John Ware Reclaimed John Ware Reclaimed follows filmmaker Cheryl Foggo on her quest to re-examine the mythology surrounding John Ware, the Black cowboy who settled in Alberta, Canada, before the turn of the 20th century.
Journey to Justice This documentary pays tribute to a group of Canadians who took racism to court. They are Canada's unsung heroes in the fight for Black civil rights.
The Road Taken This 1996 documentary takes a nostalgic ride through history to present the experiences of Black sleeping-car porters who worked on Canada's railways from the early 1900s through the 1960s.
Sisters in the Struggle This documentary features Black women active in politics as well as community, labour and feminist organizing. They share their insights and personal testimonies on the double legacy of racism and sexism, linking their personal struggles with the ongoing battle to end systemic discrimination and violence against women and people of colour.
Speakers for the Dead In the 1930s in rural Ontario, a farmer buried the tombstones of a Black cemetery to make way for a potato patch. In the 1980s, descendants of the original settlers, Black and White, came together to restore the cemetery, but there were hidden truths no one wanted to discuss.

Reading Recommendations

Tina Bebbington

Your Librarian

British Columbia Black History

Recommended Books

Recommended Films