Dionne Brand Books In Order

In Another Place, Not Here

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.

At the Full and Change of Moon

Written with lyrical fire in a chorus of vividly rendered voices, Dionne Brand’s second novel is an epic of the African diaspora across the globe. It begins in 1824 on Trinidad, where Marie Ursule, queen of a secret slave society called the Sans Peur Regiment, plots a mass suicide. The end of the Sans Peur is also the beginning of a new world, for Marie Ursule cannot kill her young daughter, Bola who escapes to live free and bear a dynasty of descendants who spill out across the Caribbean, North America, and Europe. Haunted by a legacy of passion and oppression, the children of Bola pass through two world wars and into the confusion, estrangement, and violence of the late twentieth century. ‘ Brand has a lush and exuberant style that may put some readers in mind of Toni Morrison or Edwidge Danticat.’ William Ferguson, The New York Times Book Review; ‘A delicately structured, beautifully written novel infused with rare emotional clarity.’ Julie Wheelwright, The Independent London; ‘Rich, elegiac, almost biblical in its rhythms…
One of the essential works of our times.’ The Globe & Mail Toronto

What We All Long For

Dionne Brand powerfully delves into uncharted aspects of urban life, the bittersweetness of youth, and secrets families try to hide. Tuyen is an aspiring artist and the daughter of Vietnamese parents who ve never recovered from losing one of their children while in the rush to flee Vietnam in the 1970s. She rejects her immigrant family’s hard won lifestyle, and instead lives in a rundown apartment with friends each of whom is grappling with their own familial complexities and heartache.

In turns thrilling and heartbreaking, Tuyen s lost brother who has since become a criminal in the Thai underworld journeys to Toronto to find his long lost family. As Quy s arrival nears, tensions build, friendships are tested, and an unexpected encounter will forever alter the lives of Tuyen and her friends.

Gripping at times, heartrending at others, What We All Long For is an ode to a generation of longing and identity, and to the rhythms and pulses of a city and its burgeoning, questioning youth.

Sans Souci, and Other Stories

A moving collection from one of the foremost Canadian writers of her generation.