Into and Out of Dislocation

by C.S. Giscombe

A thought-provoking meditation on the connections between landscape, race, and family

It was on his third or fourth trip there that the poet C. S. Giscombe grew aware of the space Canada had staked out in his imagination. Giscombe later spent a winter with his family in British Columbia, and his time there provides a lens through which he interrogates his preoccupation with Canada's otherness. Giscombe writes that "border crossings are always sexy. And racial." And so this book is filled with both actual and metaphoric exploration--and his travels serve as points of departure for a series of riffs on racial, national, physical, and psychological borders.

At the heart of this book is the author's ambivalent pursuit of John Robert Giscome, a man who may or may not be a relative. John R., as Giscombe calls him, was a black Jamaican explorer who flourished in British Columbia during the last half of the nineteenth century. Giscombe documents the places that John R. passed through, and he uncovers stories about mining, pioneer life, and even cannibalism. Giscombe likes to imagine John R. as a "self-aware outsider," and that status comes to seem more important--more interesting--than any historical truth.

Into and Out of Dislocation is an intriguing and wryly told travel memoir by a writer Henry Louis Gates called a "major figure in contemporary African American letters."

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book functions in so many ways that I expect to read it multiple times. It is a memoir, yes, but also a history of sorts, and a travelogue, moving as it does between parts of the U.S., Canada, and Jamaica. It deals with heritage, race, and domestic intimacies. Its honesty is moving. Most of all, though, I find this book to be about memory--memory in its various personal and social dimensions, memory as obsessive and looping through overlapping iterations. Memory as a form of fidelity and uncertainty.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a better sense of his poetics; good discussion of the connection of blood relationships to geography, and how you can pass through a country, leave your name on a locale, but still be invisible depending on how the history is written which depends on who you are and who is doing the writing about you.

[Myles · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.4/5.0) No, my professor didn't assign his own book in class. Yes, I read it off the curriculum, and, more importantly, I genuinely enjoyed it. Informative and, as Giscombe always puts it "promiscuous," Into and Out of Dislocation wanders into some marvelous territory.

[Melody · Rating 3 out of 5]

In search of roots and racial divides.

[Keith McGowan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book recounts the author's search for himself in Canada. I hope he found himself. I will never know as I put it down after the first chapter.

[Paula Koneazny · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all-time favorite books. The ultimate circular and circuitous travel memoir.