For decades, the poet, novelist, and essayist Dionne Brand has shaped the way that Black life is discussed. Her new book, Salvage, revisits canonical texts of English literature to foreground the ways in which they licensed capitalism, colonization, slavery, and more. In discussions of Robinson Crusoe, Jane Eyre, and Vanity Fair, among other works, the former poet laureate of Toronto attests to the lasting impact of the classics in shaping the modern world. She also points to an alternative mode of reading those texts to resist their legitimations of modern ills and to an alternative tradition of writing that might still offer a route out of present modes of oppression.
The Nation spoke with Brand about capitalism’s aesthetics, the novel’s relationship to colonization, and a literary tradition alternative to the classic English novel.
—Elias Rodriques
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