Kreisel

"The geopolitics of empire had already prepared me for this…coloniality constructs outsides and insides, worlds to be chosen, disturbed, interpreted and navigated – in order to live something like a real self." Internationally acclaimed poet and novelist Dionne Brand reflects on her early reading of colonial literature and how it makes Black being inanimate. She explores her encounters with colonial, imperialist, and racist tropes; the ways that practices of reading and writing are shaped by those narrative structures; and the challenges of writing a narrative of Black life that attends to its own expression and its own consciousness.

Home, for me, was not a birthright, but an invention.. It seems to me when we speak of home we are speaking of several things, often at once, muddled together into an uneasy stew. We say home and mean origins, we say home and mean belonging.

I broke all the rules that my dad gave me.

“Speaking one language, I submit, is like living in a house with one window only…”

In all creative writing, the question of what is true and what is real are two very different considerations. Figuring out how to dance between them is a murky business. Most of What Follows Is True is an examination of the complex relationship between fact and fiction, between the "real world" and the stories we tell to explain the world to ourselves. Drawing on his own experience appropriating historical characters to fictional ends, Michael Crummey brings forward important questions about how writers use history and real-life figures to animate fictional stories.

"This is one of the most valued 'go to' books in my library with talking points new, even to me." — Alyja Kalinich, Disneyland Costume Designer