3 modern classics by Black Canadian authors to read

What does it take for a book to be recognized as a classic? If you’ve ever wondered that yourself, we’ve got you covered.

“A classic novel to me is one that unearths and uncovers universal truths,” CBC Books senior producer Ryan B. Patrick said on The Next Chapter. “We’re looking at love versus loss, the search for identity, the struggle for power, good versus evil.”

“A classic novel is something you can read when you’re 15, when you’re 30, when you’re 60 and each time, you look at something new, something reveals itself. It delivers layers of meaning that shift as your lived experience shifts.”

The three books he believes are, or will become, modern classics by Black Canadian authors are What We All Long For by Dionne Brand, Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis and You’ve Changed Ian Williams. In a conversations with Antonio Michael Downing on The Next Chapter, he explained why.

Redefining Canadian literature

Patrick’s first choice was What We All Long For by Dionne Brand, which won the 2006 National Book Award.

What We All Long For tells the story of four second-generation Canadians living in Toronto who are trying to navigate their lives in a challenging, sometimes unfamiliar city.

“It’s just real. It just feels so real. When you think of the quintessential Canadian novel, you’re thinking of the wilderness or you’re thinking of forests. Dionne Brand kind of reframes that and it’s very urban, it’s very Black diasporic, it’s very immediate,” he said.

“I didn’t see Canadian literature shown in that way and it kind of opened my eye to the power and value of that lived experience being Black or brown writing fiction.”

Brand is one of Canada’s most decorated and celebrated writers. As a queer Black novelist, poet and filmmaker, she has been creating in various mediums for over 40 years. She is a member of the Order of Canada and has won numerous awards, including the 1997 Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry for the collection Land to Light On. Brand also won the 2019 Blue Metropolis Violet Literary Prize presented to an LGBTQ writer for their body of work.

A book that moves quickly but stays with you

Patrick’s second choice was Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis, which won Canada Reads 2017 and the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

“The set up is wild,” he explained. “You have two Greek gods, Hermes and Apollo, they’re in a Toronto bar, as two gods are usually. They’re debating whether animals would be happier if they had human intelligence so they give it to 15 dogs at a vet clinic and then they sit back and watch the chaos unfold.”

When delving into this topic, the book becomes a philosophical exploration of what it means to have consciousness. “Some embrace it, some resist it, some become poets, others become tyrants, but some just want to love their human owners. I love how readable it is. You can finish this book really quickly, it moves at a very fast clip but it lingers.”

Patrick said that he tried to avoid reading the book when it came out just because of how celebrated it immediately was.

But, Patrick said, he eventually came around and picked it up. He found the book “typical of André Alexis’s work,” he said. “He’s got this uncanny ability to weave in complex philosophy and complex questions into these engaging, almost surreal narratives.”

“I think his work has pretty much redefined the Black Canadian experience in terms of Canadian Literature.”

Alexis was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, and raised in Ottawa. His debut novel, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award (now known as the Amazon First Novel Award) and the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His other books include Pastoral, Asylum, The Hidden Keys, Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa and Days by Moonlight, which won the 2019 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and was on the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. 

A book that is a master of structure and form

Patrick’s final choice was You’ve Changed by Ian Williams, which he said he thinks was released too recently to actually call a classic, but “has the potential to be a modern classic.”

You’ve Changed tells the story of a married couple in Vancouver, whose marriage is beginning to unravel, causing them to enter a crisis.

“It looks at the basic premise that marriage is hard,” Patrick said. “Marriage is hard work. You’re with people for however long and you’re changing and it changes how you see things but you’re still with this person. The book really explores that and it really explores race as well.”

“There’s this hyper-awareness of gender and race between the two characters and I really love how he tackles it. He plays with form, he plays with text. There’s certain parts where the text is redacted when he’s referring to sex. He’s a master in terms of playing with structure and form.”

Ian Williams is an English professor at the University of Toronto and director of the creative writing program. He’s also the author of several books of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. His debut novel, Reproduction, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize. He gave the 2024 Massey Lecture on his nonfiction book What I Mean to Say. 

Quotations have been edited for length and clarity. This segment was produced by Jacqueline Kirk.