Ghanian-Canadian author Esi Edugyan has a new non-fiction book out titled Out of the Sun: On Race and Storytelling. The book was published on September 28th by the House of Anansi Press. Out of the Sun examines the relationship between race and Black histories within visual art, literature, film, and her own life experiences to offer new perspectives on mainstream historical narratives.

Edugyan delivered Out of the Sun for this year’s CBC Massey Lecture, an annual series of lectures featuring writers, thinkers and scholars co-sponsored by CBC Radio, House of Anansi Press and Massey College in the University of Toronto. Past notable lecturers include authors Margaret Atwood and Thomas King, linguist Noam Chomsky and literary critic Northrop Frye.

Read the publisher’s description.

An insightful exploration and moving meditation on identity, art, and belonging from one of the most celebrated writers of the last decade.

What happens when we begin to consider stories at the margins, when we grant them centrality? How does that complicate our certainties about who we are, as individuals, as nations, as human beings? Through the lens of visual art, literature, film, and the author’s lived experience, Out of the Sun examines Black histories in art, offering new perspectives to challenge us.

In this groundbreaking, reflective, and erudite book, two-time Scotiabank Giller Prize winner and internationally bestselling author Esi Edugyan illuminates myriad varieties of Black experience in global culture and history. Edugyan combines storytelling with analyses of contemporary events and her own personal story in this dazzling first major work of non-fiction.

Esi Edugyan was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta to Ghanian parents. She is the internationally bestselling author of Washington Black, which was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Carnegie Medal for Literary Excellence, and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and won the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Purchase Out of the Sun: House of Anansi – Amazon