Back Talk: Plays of Black Experience

“To read Delisle’s plays is to be sat right sown on the front stoop or round the kitchen table of Africadian fact. She puts us there, centre stage, right in the midst of the country-and-town reality of The People philosophizin, drinkin. singin, prayin, quiltin,laughin, gamblin, churchgoin, runnin, braidin hair, lovin, workin, fightin, talkin back to cops an such, and just keepin on keepin on. Delisle’s sociology is exactly who we be, so doncha get upset; her vision of our history is what we need to know, so pay attention. Ya gonna forget the Town of Shelburne passed a law “forbidding negro dances and frolics” in 1789? Naw, I say, naw…” –George Elliott Clarke, Poet & E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature, University of Toronto