1. B o o k s i n R e v i e w
134 Canadian Literature 198 / Autumn 2008
par la lecture, le disque compact qui accom-
pagne Mon oncle Émile conte nous permet
d’apprécier le conteur en exercice.
On le voit, suivant la trajectoire qui lui
est particulière, chacun des trois recueils
considérés ici projette quiconque s’y laisse
emporter dans de véritables œkoumènes
endogènes du conte, ces espaces habités
dont la matière première provient des pro-
fondeurs de l’imagination humaine et que
l’on prend plaisir à explorer par échappées.
Generations
Lorna Goodison
From Harvey River: a memoir of my mother and
her people. McClelland & Stewart $29.99
Dawn P. Williams, ed.
Who’s Who in Black Canada 2: Black Success and
Black Excellence in Canada, a Contemporary
Directory. UTP $35.99
Reviewed by Katherine Verhagen
Lorna Goodison’s From Harvey River rec-
ords and transforms her family history
into a multi-generational narrative about
perseverance and adaptation. Dedicated to
her parents, this book is a family memoir in
which Goodison appears as a character who
frames the narrative in a few short pages at
the beginning and at the end of the book.
Doris, Goodison’s late mother, leads the
narrative from Part Two onward, meeting
challenges from crowded urban housing,
economic hardship, working in a lunatic
asylum, the loss of a spouse, and family ill-
ness. Goodison does not present a simple
account of her mother but of her “genera-
tions, familial relations as the Jamaicans
call them”: whenever Doris is faced by great
adversity, she finds strength in thinking of
her forebears, such as her sister, Cleodine,
or her grandfather, George O’Brian Wilson.
Similarly, in the epilogue, Goodison (the
character) awakens confused in a hotel
room but reorients herself by recalling her
lineage and her place within it. Underneath
sur le riche ou le fort, la fin de la majorité
des contes est marquée d’un ton jubilatoire.
Jubilatoire, la fin l’est aussi pour les
manuscrits de Carrière, car cette trouvaille
précieuse, qui met en valeur l’héritage de
la plus ancienne communauté de l’Ontario
français, se voit enfin livrée.
Dans son nouveau recueil, qui fait suite
aux Contes d’Émile et une nuit, Ange-Émile
Maheu nous offre, quant à lui, un autre
échantillon brillant de contes prélevés de
son riche répertoire. Si Mon oncle Émile
conte fait, à plusieurs reprises, écho aux
Treize contes fantastiques québécois et aux
Contes du Détroit, au point que le recueil
de Maheu renferme des contes dont une
version différente se retrouve dans un des
deux recueils (« Le Diable danseur » et
« L’étranger », « La justice de Ti-Jean » et
« Cornencul »), l’intérêt particulier de ce
mélange hétérogène de récits réside dans
l’art de Maheu de piquer la curiosité du
lecteur et de retenir son attention jusqu’à
la fin de l’aventure. C’est sans doute à cette
fin que le conteur agrémente son recueil
de commentaires portant, entre autres,
sur les sources plus ou moins précises des
contes, qu’il se plaît à déjouer les attentes du
lecteur et qu’il cherche à adapter les contes
au public moderne en y glissant, par exem-
ple, des préoccupations et des expressions
contemporaines. À ce souci de moderni-
sation, lequel me fait, d’ailleurs, douter de
la convenance du sous-titre de « contes
traditionnels » attribué à Mon oncle Émile
conte, s’ajoute un effort continuel de souli-
gner la véracité des récits, qui, émanant de
tout le recueil, le dote d’un charme envoû-
tant. Toutes ces stratégies narratives, qui
mettent en évidence les pouvoirs de trans-
mission et de (re)création propres au conte,
contribuent à établir une connivence entre
conteur et lecteur et à engendrer ce que
François Falhault appelle un « être-ensem-
ble » et ce, dans le but d’accueillir le lecteur
dans l’illusion vraie du conte. Et si jamais
on désirait se laisser séduire autrement que

2. 135 Canadian Literature 198 / Autumn 2008
African-Canadian community included
as prospective role models for African-
Canadian youth but so are the models’
mentors, mapping a generational tree of
influence. To develop a mentoring theme,
Williams has many contributors include
personal mottos in their entries, to motivate
their potential readers. For instance, Dany
Laferrière quips, “J’écris comme je vis” while
Althea Prince warns, “Never cut anything
that can be untied.” Several entries have
e-mail contact information listed, to permit
readers to expand their networks to include
these writers, artists, businesspersons,
educators, and so forth. Readers can also
search for role models by primary activity
of interest as well as by province and will
see advertisements for mostly secondary
and higher education and business “black
excellence.”
In her acknowledgements, Williams
comments on how many reviewers and
readers understood the first edition’s “sig-
nificance . . . for Black youth [and] that it
serve[d] as an affirmation of achievements
and an acknowledgement of possibilities.”
However, another important use for this
invaluable resource representing those who
are “striving and achieving,” in Williams’
words, is for “African/Black Canad[ians] . . .
to know each other better and to organize,”
in the words of George Elliott Clarke. This
expanded edition gives a more coherent
network to a community in need of a better
understanding of its breadth and diversity
in order to, one day, achieve more political
and economic power.
Both Goodison’s and Williams’ works give
their African-Canadian readers a lineage—
personal and political, respectively—as well
as an understanding of who they are in
respect to those generations before them. I
would recommend both texts as necessary
reading, Goodison’s for her Standard and
Jamaican English lyricisim and Williams’ for
her comprehensive and enlightening wealth
of African-Canadian talent and success.
the surface of her thoughts, she dives to
find the “evidence of my generations” as the
bedrock of her “mind like [a] riverbed.” The
book begins with the dedication to her par-
ents and then her family tree, all presented
before we get a glimpse of young Lorna
“asking urgent questions” of her mother and
father about their genealogy.
Yet as the opening African proverb to
Dawn P. Williams’ directory warns, “[u]
ntil lions have their own historian, [t]ales
of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”
Goodison relates her family memoir that
uses the history of post-plantation, pre-
Independence, and then post-Independence
Jamaica. She uses not only her family
members to tell the nation’s story but also
unrelated characters who populate the
rural landscape of Harvey River—the river
that bears her family’s name—to “hard life”
urban Kingston. As a result, I find some
of the extra-literary promotional writing,
on the inner leaves and back of the book
covers, to be distracting and trite. For
instance, the McClelland & Stewart book
leaf description states that Goodison “tells
a universal story of family and the ties that
bind us to the place we call home.” As well,
one of the reviewers, Merilyn Simonds,
gushes that “these characters will move
right in and take up permanent residence
in your heart.” Goodison’s story is not uni-
versal; it is the story of Jamaica. Also, her
characters are fallible human beings, not
clichés. Therefore, Austin Clarke’s quoted
review is far more apt in revealing the
context of Goodison’s memoir: “she has
‘taken back her language’ from the clichés
and drowsy characterizations of a country
and its people.” Like her mother before her,
Goodison loves her Harvey River roots, but
she is not infatuated with them.
Dawn P. Williams also believes that it is
necessary to know one’s roots in order to
grow as she compiles the second edition
of Who’s Who in Black Canada. Not only
are several prominent members of the