Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory Reading Wayde Compton

This book is a comprehensive analysis of the literary oeuvre of Wayde Compton, examining the interplay between modes of literary production, urban commemoration, the formation of Black racial identity on the margins of the diaspora, and coalitions of solidarity with other communities in Vancouver. Stemming from an interdisciplinary perspective that blends Spatial Literary Studies, Hip hop epistemology, and the transmodern paradigm, this book presents a dynamic model of Black identity formation and belonging, resulting from the remix of Afro-diasporic and transcultural elements and the political commemoration of local Black spaces in an often-understudied node of the Black diaspora. This book also explores Compton’s contribution to recent academic debates on the interaction between the commemoration of Black spaces and the right to the city, as well as the engagement with Indigenous calls for the decolonisation of their ancestral lands. The analysis of Compton’s work allows for the deconstruction of the binaries African/Canadian, Indigenous/settler, Hogan’s Alley/Vancouver and exposes the co-constitutive character of these elements.