Afua Cooper Knihy

Dr. Afua Cooper is a distinguished poet, author, researcher, and historian, celebrated for her contributions to various literary genres, including poetry and children's literature. A founding member of the Toronto Dub Poets Collective, she has received numerous accolades, such as the Portia White Prize and the J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Prize. As a professor at Dalhousie University, she leads research on Black Canadian history. Rebecca Bender, an award-winning author-illustrator, honors the victims of the Halifax Explosion in her illustrated work, aiming to shed light on overlooked individuals from this national tragedy.

Dramatic imagery captures the catastrophic events of December 6, 1917, when the collision of two ships in Halifax Harbour led to a devastating explosion. The poem not only recounts the tragedy's impact on Halifax and its residents but also emphasizes the bravery shown amidst the chaos, particularly within the African Nova Scotian community, who faced ongoing racism. Dr. Afua Cooper commemorates this historical disaster through evocative verse, enhanced by striking photographs and art, highlighting the experiences of Black Haligonians during this pivotal moment.

Halifax's Poet Laureate Afua Cooper and photographer Wilfried Raussert collaborate in this book of poems and photographs focused on everyday Black experiences. The result is a jambalaya -- a dialogue between image and text. Cooper translates Raussert's photos into poetry, painting a profound image of what disembodied historical facts might look like when they are embodied in contemporary characters. This visual and textual conversation honours the multiple layers of Blackness in the African diaspora around North America and Europe. The result is a work that amplifies black beauty and offers audible resistance.

This is the remarkable story of Phillis Wheatley, who is born into an African family of griots, or storytellers, but captured by slave raiders and forced aboard a slave ship, where appalling conditions spell death for many of her companions. Numerous sharks follow the ship, feeding on the corpses of slaves thrown overboard. Weakened by the voyage and near death in a Boston slave market, Wheatley is bought by a kind family who nurses her back to health and teaches her to read and write. Soon her mistress recognizes that the girl is a quick learner and talented. At the age of 12, a torrent of poetry begins to flow out of Wheatley. Proud of her achievements, her mistress organizes readings in Boston's finest parlors and drawing rooms, and Wheatley's fame spreads. But even when many in Boston are calling her a prodigy and a genius, some remain unsure that a slave should be able to write, much less write poetry. When Phillis travels to London she is a media sensation, feted by the cream of English society. A book of her poems is published, and she finally gains her freedom. This amazing story, wide in scope, is based on fact and told convincingly from young Wheatley's point of view.

Often shocking, always compelling, Afua Cooper's novel is based on the life of Henry Bibb, an American slave who after repeated attempts escaped in 1841 to become an anti-slavery speaker, author and founder of a Black newspaper. Cooper takes painstakingly researched details about slavery and weaves an intimate story of Bibb's young life, which is overshadowed by inconceivable brutality. At nine years old, Henry is separated from his mother and brothers and hired out, suffering abuse at the hands of cruel masters so severe he almost dies. Henry's courageous life is described in intimate detail and young readers will learn about everyday slave life on a plantation and in towns and cities, the coded language of slave escapes and the dangerous routes over land and water to safe houses. As Henry Bibb moves from boyhood to manhood, he knows that one day he will “fly away” as in the old legend of the Africans who flew away to freedom. The first-person narrative, convincingly told in Henry's voice, traces Bibb's boyhood, marriage, fatherhood and the developing awareness of his bondage and his determination to break free of it or die.