“That Particularly Canadian Thing”

Remapping Black Canada through Narratives of Mobility

Abstract

While the road narrative genre is closely tied to the project of nation-building, nation can be an alienating construction for the traveller that feels other. This article considers the way that nation is represented in Black Canadian narratives of mobility, in particular George Elliot Clarke’s The Motorcyclist and André Alexis’ Days by Moonlight. These novels, I argue, are rooted in considerations of place despite being about mobility. Mobility functions as the driving force that stimulates the travellers’ reflections on the nation as a whole, their place within it, and how their identity figures in relation to national identity as a construction.