The best kinds of conversations should meander and detour, trip over delicate areas, double down when a point must be emphatically asserted. After all, the ostensible subject of this 1997 on-stage chat between Dionne Brand and Jamaica Kincaid is the release of Kincaid's memoir, My Brother. But this book gets only a brief nod early on and the subject is largely abandoned for other thoughts and digressions. You can't for a moment fault either of these vital writers for that fact, as important and provocative as Kincaid's book is, for even when planned, a conversation best works when the unexpected comes out, when an anecdote or a memory surfaces that opens up a new avenue for exploration. There is a striking chemistry here between these two very different kinds of writers (though on the surface they seem to share a number of similarities): they agree, they laugh, they riff on each other's thoughts, all to wonderful effect. The chemistry is so strong, one suspects, that any subject they choose to explore would be worth listening to. So pay close attention because another great thing about good conversations: they are fleeting and may only happen once. 

Works by Jamaica Kincaid

My Brother (print edition)
See Now Then (print edition) (ebook)
Annie John (print edition) (ebook)
A Small Place (print edition) (audiobook)
Lucy (print edition) (ebook)
At the Bottom of the River (print edition)

Works by Dione Brand

Salvage: Readings from the Wreck (print edition) (ebook) (audiobook)
An Autobiography of the Autobiography of Reading (ebook)
Beyond Borders: Arab Feminists Talk About Their Lives - East and West (DVD)

Other Related Books or Materials

• "An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children" (this link opens an article from The New Yorker from Oct 2024)
• "Walking Children Through a Garden of Good and Evil"  Visiting Jamaica Kincaid's Vermont Garden  (this link opens an article from The Harvard Gazette from Jul 2024)
• "This is How You Smile" by Gazelle Mba (this link opens an article in The London Review of Books from Feb 2024)

About the Host of Writers Off the Page

Randy Boyagoda is a novelist and professor of English at the University of Toronto, where he serves as advisor on civil discourse and vice-dean undergraduate, in the Faculty of Arts and Science. He has written seven books, including four novels. His work has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize and named a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year and New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice selection. He regularly contributes essays, opinions and reviews to publications including the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Financial Times of London, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Globe and Mail, and appears frequently on CBC Radio. A former president of PEN Canada, Boyagoda lives in Toronto with his wife and their four daughters.

Music is by Yuka

Thanks to the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) for allowing TPL access to their archives to feature some of the best-known writers in the world from moments in the past. Thanks as well to Library and Archives Canada for generously allowing TPL access to these archives.