Black Canadian Contexts: The Case of Amelia E. Johnson

The author examines the early family life and Canadian upbringing and education of late nineteenth-century author Amelia Etta Hall Johnson (1858-1922). Born in Toronto and educated in Montreal before immigrating to the United States, the author locates Johnson and her family within Black communities in Baltimore, Toronto, and Montreal by highlighting a series of useful relations which provide a better understanding of Johnson's work, particularly her last understudied novel, Martina Meriden (published in 1901). More broadly, the author argues that reading Johnson as the product of a bilingual, ethnically and racially diverse Montreal, forwards new ways of thinking about her characters, often understood as racially ambiguous.

African American Review

Vol. 49

no. 3

241-259

Fall 2016

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