DISORIENTATION

Growing up, Ian Williams had the opportunity to not only experience Blackness in the eyes of Americans, but to also get fragments of what being Black is like in the world through living in Trinidad and Canada as well. Now the time has come to try to make sense of this picture society has painted and tried to force on people about what it means to be a person of colour.

Disorientation reveals the diversity of Black lives not covered in existing books, such as the significance of Black faces and bodies in fomenting division and classification; how the politicization of religion affects race relations; the ten characteristics of institutional whiteness; what it means to be the only Black person in a room, or a Black person who is not American; and the disorienting moment in childhood when one realizes one is Black

Disorientation reveals the diversity of Black lives not covered in existing books, such as the significance of Black faces and bodies in fomenting division and classification; how the politicization of religion affects race relations; the ten characteristics of institutional whiteness; what it means to be the only Black person in a room, or a Black person who is not American; and the disorienting moment in childhood when one realizes one is Black.

In his characteristic writing style, Williams shares the story of how his niece and her family had to start thinking about the N word when it was abruptly thrown at her. First solution: tell the authorities, says mom. Second solution: deal with it yourself, says dad. And in the end, as always and no matter which option they choose, nothing happens.

"It disrupts your reality. It is enacted on you - it interrupts. It stalls the forward momentum of your life. You can't prepare for disorientation. You can try walking around in an armoured suit."

With Disorientation: The Experience of Being Black in the World, Ian Williams pens a book that is meant to act more as a conversational piece than a confrontational one. It is a book that does not derive its energy from anger at whiteness, nor does it aim to offer inspirational platitudes on Blackness. Rather, Disorientation sheds new light on the issues that dominate social discourse today in a book deliberately aimed at the world of tomorrow.

Ian Williams is the author of the novel Reproduction, the winner of the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize; Personals, which was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award; Not Anyone's Anything, winner of the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first collection of short fiction in Canada, and You Know Who You Are, a finalist for the ReLit Prize for poetry. In 2020 he published his latest poetry collection, Word Problems. In fall 2021 he will release Disorientation: The Experience of Being Black in the World. Williams is Associate Professor of English at the University of Toronto. He completed his doctorate in English there under George Elliott Clarke. He spent four years teaching poetry in the Creative Writing Department at the University of British Columbia. In 2014-2015 he was the Writer-in-Residence for the University of Calgary's Distinguished Writers Program. He has held fellowships or residencies from Vermont Studio Center, the Banff Center, Cave Canem, and the National Humanities Center. Born in Trinidad, Williams grew up in Brampton, Ontario, and has worked in Massachusetts and Ontario.