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376 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 Althea Prince is, in fact, quick to remind readers how easily and endlessly the past is disregarded and repeated, particularly in her essays on institutions in part 2. Here, she reads the silences in a symposium on >Black Canadian Studies= held at York University in 1998, an event to which no African-Canadian faculty of her generation B the very people who had pushed for more black faculty, wider student access, and curricula that included the world-views of African peoples B were invited. Prince then turns her critical eye to >Black History Month= and >Toronto=s Caribana,= arguing against the ghettoization produced by cultural festivals and for a dialogue across generations of African Canadians that could review and transform these events. The impressive range of this collection B and of Althea Prince=s life/work B is indicated by the third section of essays, >Writing.= An incisive commentary on the events surrounding the >Writing Thru= Race= conference is followed by a literary critical article that applies >the Jamesian notion of authenticity to the work of three African Caribbean women writers,= one of whom is Prince herself. A better sense of Prince=s creative writing emerges in her >Envoi,= >Talking to a Six/Eight Drum,= where her earlier comments on the politics of language (>Stop Calling Us Slaves=) are actively, and often humorously, engaged. Code-switching, shifts in register of voice, and back-and-forth movies in genre from >Western= essay to Caribbean Story, from life narrative to the critical deconstruction of advertisements, create a poetics that defies labels, and a politics that is engaged and engaging. One of several gifts that Althea Prince gives her readers in this collection of essays is a series of metaphors that embody her world-view and her particular social reality. These metaphors, of healing aloe plants, talking drums, and her angry >jangling silver bracelets= from West Africa, enfold specific material histories within their symbolic value. But it is the Antiguan patch-work, a new work of art >created out of necessity,= that best describes Prince=s critical method of bringing together different histories and experiences (personal, communal, place-specific, and Pan-African) to elucidate knowledges that can imagine and motivate changes. The patchwork forms a >power-centre= because its creator sees beauty in each piece of salvaged fabric, however worn and faded, and because it represents continuance in the face of oppression and genocide. Similarly, Prince=s essay collection proposes a kind of critical continuance in her insistence that an understanding of >being black= in present-day Canada requires the complex context of African Canadians= several and collective pasts. Finally, the high production values of this book merit praise: thoughtfully edited, a striking cover design in a style that will be familiar to readers of other Insomniac titles, and an equally well designed textual layout with margins of luxurious proportions. If only all books honoured the words within like this ... (DANIELLE FULLER) Sky Gilbert. Ejaculations from the Charm Factory HUMANITIES 377 ECW Press. xii, 272. $19.95 Sky Gilbert=s favourite word is >I.= Although he bills Ejaculations from the Charm Factory as a memoir, a genre in which the first-person pronoun necessarily assumes prominence, Gilbert also settles old scores, dishes dirt on actors, expounds personal opinions, and throws hissy fits. This autobiography wants to be a showbiz bio-pic. Even though Gilbert denounces the >gaudy sham= of the film industry and the culture of fame that infects contemporary culture, he defines himself in relation to Andy Warhol, Ayn Rand, Bette Davis, and other icons. Self-advertising looms large as a billboard. Gilbert considers himself >a political figure to be reckoned with.= He claims to understand ironies that >are lost on just about everyone else.= He calls himself >extremely talented=; therefore he belongs to >a very small group of people who are famous.= He describes actor-writerdancer Keith Cole as >just about the gayest man on earth besides moi.= Queerness is not a competition like figure-skating or a Miss Universe pageant. Being >the gayest man on earth= means nothing in comparative terms. Towards the end of this catalogue of contretemps, Gilbert brags about the histrionic techniques...

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