Vicent Cucarella Ramón - Benjamin Drew

This cross-border collection stands as “the most extensive anthology that we possess of slave narratives recorded in Canada” (Siemerling 123). It actively contributes to the recently coined “trope of the borderless text” (Knag 435) within the transnational turn. This means that Drew’s A North-Side View of Slavery: The Refugee, or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada shall be noted as foundational text of (African) Canadian literature but also that it attains a new meaning when read through the lens of contemporary Black Canadian criticism since it shows that such testimonies by cross-border Black Canadians that underwent multi-directional migrations insert themselves in a transnational source of textual production. In so doing, these new African Canadians began to reconfigure new meanings of Blackness in Canada, set out the foundations of a Black Canadian sense of attachment, or African Canadianité , whilst they additionally helped to reshape North America and to contribute to the birth of the Canadian nation-state since, in the end, what it is undeniable and makes A North-Side View of Slavery: The Refugee, or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada a classic compilation is that “in reading Drew’s narratives, one hears the definite Canadian voice” (Clarke, “Introduction” 19).

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A NORTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY

THE REFUGEE: OR THE NARRATIVES OF FUGITIVE SLAVES IN CANADA

RELATED BY THEMSELVES, WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE HISTORY AND CONDITION OF THE COLORED POPULATION OF UPPER CANADA

BY

BENJAMIN DREW

BOSTON:

PUBLISHED BY JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY. CLEVELAND, OHIO:

JEWETT, PROCTOR AND WORTHINGTON.

NEW YORK: SHELDON, LAMPORT AND BLAKEMAN.

LONDON: TRÜBNER AND CO.

1856.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: ALLEN AND FARNHAM, STEREOTYPERS AND PRINTERS.

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