Acclaimed by Adrienne Rich as "fierce, sensuous . . . a work of great beauty and moral imagination," In Another Place, Not Here tells of two contemporary Caribbean women who find brief refuge in each other on an island in the midst of political uprising. Elizete, dreaming of running to another place to escape the harshness of her daily life on the island, meets Verlia, an urban woman in constant flight who has returned to her island birthplace with hopes of revolution. Their tumultuous story moves between city and island, past and future, fantasy and reality. With all the lyrical intensity of a praisesong, Dionne Brand’s luminous debut novel, In Another Place, Not Here, tells of two contemporary Caribbean women one urban, passionate, and idealistic, the other constrained by disillusion and rural poverty, each in her own spiritual exile who find brief refuge in each other on an island in the midst of political uprising. Elizete dreams of running to another place to escape the harshness of her daily life on the island. Knowing better than to hope for much, she lives in a world of lush inventions that stave off reality. Then she meets Verlia, a woman in constant flight, who lives in Toronto and has returned to her island birthplace with hope of revolution. Both women are dreaming of each other’s reality and of each other. Their tumultuous story moves between city and island, between material and spiritual poverty, between fantasy and reality, in a past and future time where the dream is always, again, deferred.
Author
As a young girl growing up in Trinidad, Dionne Brand submitted poems to the newspapers under the pseudonym Xavier Simone, an homage to Nina Simone, whom she would listen to late at night on the radio. Brand moved to Canada when she was 17 to attend the University of Toronto, where she earned a degree in Philosophy and English, a Masters in the Philosophy of Education and pursued PhD studies in Women’s History but left the program to make time for creative writing. Dionne Brand first came to prominence in Canada as a poet. Her books of poetry include No Language Is Neutral, a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, and Land to Light On, winner of the Governor General’s Award and the Trillium Award and thirsty, finalist for the Griffin Prize and winner of the Pat Lowther Award for poetry. Brand is also the author of the acclaimed novels In Another Place, Not Here, which was shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Trillium Award, and At the Full and Change of the Moon. Her works of non-fiction include Bread Out of Stone and A Map to the Door of No Return. What We All Long For was published to great critical acclaim in 2005. While writing the novel, Brand would find herself gazing out the window of a restaurant in the very Toronto neighbourhood occupied by her characters. “I’d be looking through the window and I’d think this is like the frame of the book, the frame of reality: ‘There they are: a young Asian woman passing by with a young black woman passing by, with a young Italian man passing by,” she says in an interview with The Toronto Star. A recent Vanity Fair article quotes her as saying “I’ve ‘read’ New York and London and Paris. And I thought this city needs to be written like that, too.” In addition to her literary accomplishments, Brand is Professor of English in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. For more information, please see http://www.answers.com/topic/dionne-b...
