It Was Dark There All the Time by Andrew Hunter

It Was Dark There All the Time by Andrew Hunter

“My parents were slaves in New York State. My master’s sons-in-law … came into the garden where my sister and I were playing among the currant bushes, tied their handkerchiefs over our mouths, carried us to a vessel, put us in the hold, and sailed up the river. I know not how far nor how long — it was dark there all the time.” Sophia Burthen’s account of her arrival as an enslaved person into what is now Canada sometime in the late 18th century, was recorded by Benjamin Drew in 1855. In It Was Dark There All the Time, writer and curator Andrew Hunter builds on the testimony of Drew’s interview to piece together Burthen’s life, while reckoning with the legacy of whiteness and colonialism in the recording of her story. In so doing, Hunter demonstrates the role that the slave trade played in pre-Confederation Canada and its continuing impact on contemporary Canadian society. Evocatively written with sharp, incisive observations and illustrated with archival images and contemporary works of art, It Was Dark There All the Time offers a necessary correction to the prevailing perception of Canada as a place unsullied by slavery and its legacy.

“It Was Dark There All the Time is exhaustively researched and intriguingly wide in scope... Out of the scant details that we have of an enslaved woman’s life, Hunter and his editors have built a kind of epic reckoning and, for Hunter, a personal one, drawing as he does on elements of his own life.” -- Jeff Mahoney * Hamilton Specter *
“It Was Dark There All the Time is a book to read slowly, to think about and to learn from, to be read carefully more than once. Hunter brings a critical eye to the research and the emotional and mental work needed to share these stories.” -- Julie Kenter * Winnipeg Free Press *

Andrew Hunter is a freelance curator, artist, writer, and educator. Hunter was previously the Frederik S. Eaton Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where he produced major exhibitions and publications including Every Now Then: Reframing Nationhood, In the Ward: Lawren Harris, Toronto & the Idea of North, and Colville. Born in Hamilton and a graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, Hunter has held curatorial positions across Canada, including at the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Hamilton. He has taught at the Ontario College of Art and Design University and the University of Waterloo and lectured on curatorial practice across Canada, the United States, England, China, and Croatia. He is a member of the advisory board for the Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery at NSCAD.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781773102191
ISBN 10	1773102192
Title	It Was Dark There All the Time
Author	Andrew Hunter
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Goose Lane Editions
Year published	2022-01-25
Number of pages	328
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable