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A Map to the Door of No Return
Notes to Belonging
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Narrated by:
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Dionne Brand
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Saidiya Hartman
About this listen
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.
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.
With a new preface by the author, and an afterword by Saidiya Hartman.
©2023 Dionne Brand. Afterword © 2023 by Saidiya Hartman. (P)2023 Penguin Random House Canada Limited. All rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Salvage
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- Narrated by: Dionne Brand
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
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Dionne Brand explores English and American literature, and the colonial aesthetic that shaped her sense of self and the world, of what was possible and what was not.
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The Blue Clerk
- Ars Poetica in 59 Versos
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- Unabridged
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On a lonely wharf a clerk in an ink blue coat inspects bales and bales of paper that hold a poet's accumulated left-hand pages--the unwritten, the withheld, the unexpressed, the withdrawn, the restrained. In The Blue Clerk award-winning poet Dionne Brand stages a conversation and an argument between the poet and the Blue Clerk, who is the keeper of the poet's pages.
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Why Didn't I Hear about This Sooner?
- By HyacinthGirl on 01-07-20
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Mules and Men
- By: Zora Neale Hurston
- Narrated by: Ruby Dee
- Length: 2 hrs and 57 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Mules and Men, some of the rich cultural heritage of black America is revealed and preserved. In the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston returned to her home town of Eatonville, Florida, to collect and record the oral histories, songs, and sermons, many dating back to slavery times, that she remembered hearing as a child. These highly metaphorical folktales, "big old lies", and powerful songs helped her to recover her history, and preserve an important part of American culture.
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ABRIDGED version
- By Ben on 02-06-19
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Survival Is a Promise
- The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde
- By: Alexis Pauline Gumbs
- Narrated by: Alexis Pauline Gumbs
- Length: 17 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer, a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofit annual reports, and campus diversity-center walls. But even those who are inspired by Lorde’s teachings on “the creative power of difference” may be missing something fundamental about her life and work, and what they can mean for us today. Lorde’s understanding of survival was not simply about getting through to the other side of oppression or being resilient in the face of cancer. It was about the total stakes of what it means to be in relationship with a planet in transformation.
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outstanding!!! pure genius
- By Wendy on 11-24-24
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Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems
- By: Dionne Brand, Christina Sharpe - introduction
- Narrated by: Dionne Brand, Christina Sharpe
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning almost four decades, Dionne Brand’s poetry has given rise to whole new grammars and vocabularies. With a profound alertness that is attuned to this world and open to some other, possibly future, time and place, Brand’s ongoing labours of witness and imagination speak directly to where and how we live and reach beyond those worlds, their enclosures, and their violences.
-
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AMAZING
- By Bleriot thompson on 07-28-24
By: Dionne Brand, and others
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How to Tell When We Will Die
- On Pain, Disability, and Doom
- By: Johanna Hedva
- Narrated by: Johanna Hedva
- Length: 15 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the wake of the 2014 Ferguson riots, and sick with a chronic condition that rendered them housebound, Johanna Hedva turned to the page to ask: How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed? It was not long before this essay, “Sick Woman Theory”, became a seminal work on disability, because in reframing illness as not just a biological experience but a social one, Hedva argues that under capitalism—a system that limits our worth to the productivity of our bodies—we must reach for the revolutionary act of caring for ourselves and others.
By: Johanna Hedva
-
Salvage
- Readings from the Wreck
- By: Dionne Brand
- Narrated by: Dionne Brand
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dionne Brand explores English and American literature, and the colonial aesthetic that shaped her sense of self and the world, of what was possible and what was not.
By: Dionne Brand
-
The Blue Clerk
- Ars Poetica in 59 Versos
- By: Dionne Brand
- Narrated by: Dionne Brand
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a lonely wharf a clerk in an ink blue coat inspects bales and bales of paper that hold a poet's accumulated left-hand pages--the unwritten, the withheld, the unexpressed, the withdrawn, the restrained. In The Blue Clerk award-winning poet Dionne Brand stages a conversation and an argument between the poet and the Blue Clerk, who is the keeper of the poet's pages.
-
-
Why Didn't I Hear about This Sooner?
- By HyacinthGirl on 01-07-20
By: Dionne Brand
-
Mules and Men
- By: Zora Neale Hurston
- Narrated by: Ruby Dee
- Length: 2 hrs and 57 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Mules and Men, some of the rich cultural heritage of black America is revealed and preserved. In the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston returned to her home town of Eatonville, Florida, to collect and record the oral histories, songs, and sermons, many dating back to slavery times, that she remembered hearing as a child. These highly metaphorical folktales, "big old lies", and powerful songs helped her to recover her history, and preserve an important part of American culture.
-
-
ABRIDGED version
- By Ben on 02-06-19
-
Survival Is a Promise
- The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde
- By: Alexis Pauline Gumbs
- Narrated by: Alexis Pauline Gumbs
- Length: 17 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer, a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofit annual reports, and campus diversity-center walls. But even those who are inspired by Lorde’s teachings on “the creative power of difference” may be missing something fundamental about her life and work, and what they can mean for us today. Lorde’s understanding of survival was not simply about getting through to the other side of oppression or being resilient in the face of cancer. It was about the total stakes of what it means to be in relationship with a planet in transformation.
-
-
outstanding!!! pure genius
- By Wendy on 11-24-24
-
Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems
- By: Dionne Brand, Christina Sharpe - introduction
- Narrated by: Dionne Brand, Christina Sharpe
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning almost four decades, Dionne Brand’s poetry has given rise to whole new grammars and vocabularies. With a profound alertness that is attuned to this world and open to some other, possibly future, time and place, Brand’s ongoing labours of witness and imagination speak directly to where and how we live and reach beyond those worlds, their enclosures, and their violences.
-
-
AMAZING
- By Bleriot thompson on 07-28-24
By: Dionne Brand, and others
-
How to Tell When We Will Die
- On Pain, Disability, and Doom
- By: Johanna Hedva
- Narrated by: Johanna Hedva
- Length: 15 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the wake of the 2014 Ferguson riots, and sick with a chronic condition that rendered them housebound, Johanna Hedva turned to the page to ask: How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed? It was not long before this essay, “Sick Woman Theory”, became a seminal work on disability, because in reframing illness as not just a biological experience but a social one, Hedva argues that under capitalism—a system that limits our worth to the productivity of our bodies—we must reach for the revolutionary act of caring for ourselves and others.
By: Johanna Hedva
Critic reviews
“This book is a world, a triumph of art and thought, a compass for the ages.”—David Chariandy
“The depth of Brand’s love for her people is matched only by the honest luminosity with which she writes her account of our lives. This book’s profound understanding of the world that chattel slavery has made invites us to see this life alchemized into a more magnified vision of our being. It confirms Brand’s ceaseless foresight and the greatness of her gift.”—Canisia Lubrin
“The influence of A Map to the Door of No Return cannot be quantified. More than canonical, it has played a singular role in shaping the words, thinking, and craft of generations of Black writers across the diaspora, and will continue to do so for a long time to come.”—Robyn Maynard
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