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Asian Heritage in Canada
Authors
Dabydeen, Cyril
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Cyril Dabydeen was born in Canje,
Guyana in 1945, and worked as a teacher prior to leaving Guyana.
Dabydeen came to Canada in 1970 to pursue post-secondary studies
and completed a B.A. at Lakehead University and both an M.A.
and M.P.A. at Queen's University. His M.A. thesis was on the
poetry of Sylvia Plath.
Dabydeen is a prolific author of poetry and prose and his work has been included in numerous anthologies published in Canada, the U.S.A., the U.K., Indian and New Zealand. Dabydeen served
as Poet Laureate of Ottawa from 1985-spring 1987. He worked
for many years in the areas of human rights and race relations
and later taught English at Algonquin College in Ottawa. He
now teaches creative writing at the University of Ottawa and
lives in the nation's capital. |
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Fiction (Short stories)
Berbice Crossing and Other Stories
Leeds, England: Peepal Tree, 1996.
9th floor PS8557 .A25 B47 1996
Publisher's Synopsis (from its website)
Whether in the unsettling landscapes of rural Berbice in
Guyana (with its ferocious crocodiles and even a spliff-toting
Rasta), the wilderness of the Canadian North, or the urban
melting pot of Toronto, Dabydeen's characters are memorably
alert to what makes them feel either at home or alien in their
various landscapes. Ranging from the extremely funny to the
tragic, these stories are full of poetry, tension and sometimes
terror. Cyril Dabydeen involves the reader creatively in a
world of shifting grounds. |
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Fiction (Short
stories)
Black Jesus and Other Stories
Toronto: TSAR, 1996. |
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Fiction (Novel)
Dark Swirl
Leeds, England: Peepal Tree Press, 1989, c1988.
9th floor PS8557 .A25 D37 1989
Publisher's Synopsis (from its website)
When a European naturalist arrives in a remote South American
village, how are the villagers to respond to his promise to
remove the monstrous massacouraman from the creek? Is he a
saviour freeing them from its danger, or is he threatening
to take away something which is uniquely theirs for display
in an American or European zoo? Folk belief confronts rationalistic
science in this poetic fable which sees events through both
European and village eyes.
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Fiction
Drums of My Flesh: A Novel
Toronto: TSAR, 2005.
9th floor PS8557 .A25 D78 2005
Publisher's Synopsis (from its website)
In a central park in Ottawa's Sandy Hill, Gabe, an immigrant from Guyana (South America), explores the past in the company of his young Canadian-born daughter.
Awards and Honours
2006 Guyana Prize for Literature--Best Book of Fiction (Shortlisted) |
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Fiction (Short
stories)
Jogging in Havana
Oakville, Ont.: Mosaic Press, 1992.
9th floor PS8557 .A25 J64 1992
Publisher's Synopsis
Jogging in Havana are stories of an illuminating cast of characters: earthy, vibrant, humorous-- full of the foibles and passion for life. ... [Dabydeen] writes about cultures in transition: people on the move and coping with dramatic changes around them. About minorities on the edge of society--either in the Caribbean and South America, or in Canada--yet who are invariably human-- are always determined to survive! |
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Fiction (Short
stories)
My Brahmin Days and Other Stories
Toronto: TSAR, 2000.
9th floor PS8557
.A25 M9 2000
Publisher's Synopsis (from its website)
Closely observed, finely ironic stories confront Dabydeen's
Asian and Caribbean identity with his life experience of life
in Canada. |
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Fiction (Short
stories)
North of the Equator: Stories
Vancouver: Beach Holme Pub., 2001.
Publisher's Synopsis (from its website)
[This work] looks at the polarities of tropical and temperate
places. ...
In the tropics the outside world beckons and tempts. Characters
are transported over vast distances by memories triggered
by simple things such as the equatorial heat of a sauna on
a wintry day in Ottawa, rain falling at a funeral, or an all-consuming
obsession with the game of cricket. The result is cultural
hybridity, a creolization in which geography means much more
than just the place where you live. |
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Fiction (Short stories)
Play a Song Somebody: New and Selected Stories
Oakville, Ont.: Mosaic Press, 2004.
9th floor PS8557 .A25 P55 2004
Publisher's Synopsis
... brings together some of the very best of Cyril Dabydeen's short fiction. We are taken to exotic landscapes where South America, the Caribbean and North America intertwine. The stories define perceptions of who we are and who we are becoming as the far corners of the world draw closer. |
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Fiction (Novel)
Sometimes Hard
Kingston, Jamaica: Longman Caribbean, 1994. |
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Fiction?
Still Close to the Island
Ottawa: Commoner's Pub., 1980. |
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Fiction
To Monkey Jungle
London, Ont.: Third Eye, 1988. |
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Fiction (Novel)
The Wizard Swami
Calcutta, India: Writers Workshop, 1985.
Leeds, England: Peepal Tree Press, 1989, c1988.
9th floor PS8557 .A25 W59 1989
Publisher's Synopsis (Peepal from its website)
When Devan, the awkward boy from Providence Village, finds
his vocation as a teacher of Hinduism to the rural Indians
of the Corentyne Coast of Guyana, his life and his troubles
begin. In this richly comic novel, Cyril Dabydeen creates
a vibrant picture of the Guyanese Hindu community struggling
for a place in what is for Devan a confusingly multi-racial
country. |
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Poetry
Born in Amazonia
Oakville, Ont.: Mosaic Press, 1995.
9th floor PS8557 .A25 B67 1995
Publisher's Synopsis
Born in Amazonia explores the formidable legend of the jaguar associated with its continuing myth-making capacity in South America; the jaguar also informs the region's destiny. ...
This unique collection combines heterogenous peoples, landscape, ecology and climate with ongoing social and historical forces as Dabydeen juxtaposes past and present in an evolving mythology of time and place making its strong impact on the imagination. |
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Poetry
Coastland: New and Selected Poems, 1973-1989 [i.e. 1987]
Oakville, Ont.: Mosaic Press, 1989.
9th floor PS857 .A25 C63 1989 |
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Poetry
Discussing Columbus
Leeds, England: Peepal Tree, 1997.
9th floor PS8557 .A25 D57 1997
Publisher's Synopsis (from its website)
This collection of poems grows out of a consciousness of
a world made up of layers of journeyings and settlement, of
the meeting of heterogeneous cultures and the results of their
mingling. |
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Poetry
Distances
Vancouver: Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 1977. |
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Poetry
Elephants Make Good Stepladders: Poems
London, Ont.: Third Eye, 1982. |
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Poetry
Goatsong
Illustrated by Sharon Katz.
Oakville, Ont.: Mosaic Press/Valley Editions, 1977. |
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Poetry
Heart's Frame: Poems
Cornwall, Ont.: Vesta Publications, 1979. |
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Poetry
Hemisphere of Love
Toronto: TSAR, 2003.
9th floor PS8557 .A25 H45 2003
Publisher's Synopsis (from its website)
Hemisphere of Love reflects the
author’s passion and honesty as he delves into the mystery
of love and strives to bring order to human experience. In
this collection a range of scenes and situations is carefully
carved in words and couched in metaphor. Geographical and
spiritual boundaries, shifting tonalities and moods carry
the reader into Dabydeen’s complex universe. |
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Poetry
Imaginary Origins: Selected Poems
Leeds, England: Peepal Tree Press, 2004.
9th floor PS8557 .A25 I52 2004
Publisher's Synopsis
From his roots as an Asian whose great-grandparents migrated as indentured labourers from 19th century India to the Caribbean, from his experiences as a Guyanese growing up during a period of intense national ferment, and his life as an adult in Canada, Cyril Dabydeen has shaped a vision that makes an enlightening virtue of heterogeneity. Not merely a Guyanese exile, though Guyanese memories and concerns are vivid in his work, but a writer who has immersed himself in the landscapes, histroy and lived experience of Canada, Dabydeen's poetry shows the rich possibilities of combining immigrant and diasporic selves. |
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Poetry
Islands Lovelier Than a Vision
Ottawa: Jerusalem International, 1984.
Leeds: Peepal Tree, Press, 1986.
9th floor PS8557 .A25 I57 1986
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Poetry
Stoning the Wind: Poems
Toronto: TSAR, 1994.
Publisher's Synopsis
Stoning the Wind is a unique collection of poems arousing the twin impulse to charm and discharm, akin to WH Auden, as Dabydeen moves from grandeur to a spirited simplicity. |
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Poetry
This Planet Earth
Ottawa: Borealis Press, 1979. |
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Poetry
Unanimous Night
Windsor, Ont.: Black Moss Press, 2009.
9th floor PS8557 .A25 U596 2009
Publisher's Synopsis
... traces origins in what has long been described of his work as going back "through consciousness or history to describe an original condition of unfragmented wholeness." This wholeness stems from Daybdeen's Asian-Caribbean and Canadian background in a voice reflecting identity in a changing world seen in often unique and formative ways and expressed through his distinctive poetic idiom. In these poems of changing spaces, Dabydeen gets to the core of lived experience with imagery that makes him immediately appealing and fascinating. |
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Poetry
Uncharted Heart
Ottawa: Borealis Press, 2008.
9th floor PS8557 .A25 U63 2008
Publisher's Synopsis
... poems about formed and unformed spaces rarely seen in previous work by Cyril Dabydeen. Rhythms and feelings extend boundaries to a wider, more intricate world, as the poems aim for epiphanies in awakening to mythologies by delving into the inner recesses of our beings. ... Beliefs about destiny and journeying are spontaneously expressed, even if elegiac, but always with love and a deep understanding. |
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Anthology
Beyond Sangre Grande: CaribbeanWriting Today
Edited by Cyril Dabydeen.
Toronto: TSAR, 2011.
Forthcoming |
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Non-fiction (Literary
criticism)
A Shapely Fire: Changing the Literary Landscape
Edited by Cyril Dabydeen.
Oakville, Ont.: Mosaic Press, 1987.
9th floor PS8235
.B5 S48 1987 |
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Selected Criticism and Interpretation
Begum, Jameela. Cyril Dabydeen. Jaipur, India: Rawat Publications, 2000.
9th floor PS8557.A25 Z53 2000
Dabydeen, Cyril. "Cyril Dabydeen." Interview by Kwame Dawes. In Talk Yuh Talk: Interviews with Anglophone Caribbean Poets. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001, 86-98.
9th floor PR9205.2 .T35 2001
Dabydeen, Cyril. "Shaping the Environment: Sugar Plantation or Life After." In Writers of the Caribbean Diaspora: Shifting Homelands, Travelling Identities. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 2008, 11-25.
9th floor PR9205 .W75 2008
Kandiuk, Mary. "Cyril Dabydeen." In Caribbean and South Asian Writers in Canada: A Bibliography of Their Works and of English-language Criticism. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2007, 45-50.
9th floor PS8089.5 .C37 K36 2007
Sarbadhikary, Krishna. ""I Come to You with Crossings in my Mind...": Cyril Dabydeen." In Surviving the Fracture: Writers of the Indo-Caribbean Diaspora. New Delhi: Creative Books, 2007, 27-65.
9th floor PS8089.5 .S68 S37 2007 |
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