SOURCE: Busby, Brain John. Review of Bread Out of Stone, by Dionne Brand. Canadian Ethnic Studies 27, no. 2 (1995): 222-23.

In the following review, Busby contends that Brand's essays have much in common with journal entries in that they reveal the author's personal feelings without documenting the sources of those feelings.

A film-maker, short-story writer, feminist and Black activist, Dionne Brand is best-known as a poet, as reflected in the subtitle of this [Bread Out of Stone], her first collection of essays. For the author, poetry is dependent on politics, it “must be relevant, charged, politically conscious, memorable” (p. 167). Like her poetry, these 13 essays, whether dealing with travel, literature, or an early attempt at finding employment, inevitably touch upon matters of politics.

These are personal essays in the strictest sense, often reading like entries in a journal or diary. a current of immediacy runs throughout this book, as does an...