SOURCE: Moynagh, Maureen. “Uses of Cultural Memory.” Canadian Literature 170-171 (September-December 2001): 193-95.

In the following excerpt, Moynagh discusses Brand's treatment of cultural memory and the legacy of slavery in At the Full and Change of the Moon.

Dionne Brand's At the Full and Change of the Moon treats cultural memory as an abiding problem in the context of the African diaspora, in view not only of the forced oblivion imposed by the Middle Passage, but also of plantation slavery and its revolts, and of the dispersion of families across the “new” world. As one character living in Toronto observes near the end of the novel, “I felt as if we had been scattered out with a violent randomness.” In this moving and brilliantly evocative text, Brand addresses the problem of cultural memory by imagining a tenuous genealogy linking the offspring of Marie Ursule, “queen of the Convoi Sans...