Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada [Review]Posted in Articles, Book/Video Reviews, Canada, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive on 2011-06-18 22:14Z by Steven |
Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada [Review]
Quill and Quire – Canada’s Magazine of Book News and Reviews
October 2001
Hugh Hodges, Associate Professor of English
Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario
Lawrence Hill, Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada, Harper Collins Canada, September 2001, 256 pages, Paperback ISBN: 9780006385080; ISBN10: 0006385087.
With Black Berry, Sweet Juice Lawrence Hill opens an overdue discussion of what racial identity means to Canadians of mixed race. It’s a worthwhile project, but Hill undermines his intentions by trying to address academics and casual readers at the same time. The book falls somewhere between memoir and sociological study, but achieves neither the warmth of the former nor the rigour of the latter.
Hill’s reflections on race are often inconsistent. He pays lip service to the idea that cultures and communities are open-ended, but tends to speak of them as if they were homogenous and closed. He also seems to change his mind several times about whether racial identity is chosen by an individual or something they are born with. He argues that in contemporary Canada people are free to self-identify, but suggests that the person of mixed heritage who chooses not to identify himself as black will find that “his own race [will] take a bite out of his backside.”…
Read the entire review here.