美在哪里幸存：一本非洲回忆录

这本充满活力的回忆录揭示了乔治·埃利奥特·克拉克早年在加拿大黑人社区生活的文化和家庭压力，他称之为非洲社区，该社区位于新斯科舍省的哈利法克斯。
乔治·埃利奥特·克拉克小时候就知道，人们对他和他的两个兄弟寄予厚望。威廉·安德鲁·怀特（William Andrew White）是英国军队中第一位黑人军官（非委任）的曾孙，他的父系血统成就斐然，乔治觉得自己有责任不辜负这个姓氏。相比之下，他母亲的亲戚都是热情、脚踏实地的乡下人。这种矛盾是他生活和成长的基础，黑人和白人，乡村和城市，杰出和普通，高和低。乔治以脆弱和幽默向我们展示了这些二重性如何塑造了他作为诗人和思想家的形象。
这本书的核心是乔治与他父亲的动荡关系，父亲是一个重视艺术、音乐和书籍的自命不凡的人，但他在铁路上做了一份令人失望的工作。比尔可以充满爱心和耐心，但他也表现出破坏性的沮丧，攻击乔治的母亲，有时还攻击乔治和他的兄弟。
美丽得以幸存的故事有一个复杂的家庭，白人种族主义对黑人家庭施加的情感压力，非洲独特的文化地理，一个成为诗人的孩子，以及长期保守的秘密。
Where Beauty Survived: An Africadian Memoir
A vibrant, revealing memoir about the cultural and familial pressures that shaped George Elliott Clarke’s early life in the Black Canadian community that he calls Africadia, centred in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
As a boy, George Elliott Clarke knew that a great deal was expected from him and his two brothers. The descendant of a highly accomplished lineage on his paternal side—great-grandson to William Andrew White, the first Black officer (non-commissioned) in the British army—George felt called to live up to the family name. In contrast, his mother’s relatives were warm, down-to-earth country folk. Such contradictions underlay much of his life and upbringing—Black and White, country and city, outstanding and ordinary, high and low. With vulnerability and humour, George shows us how these dualities shaped him as a poet and thinker.
At the book’s heart is George’s turbulent relationship with his father, an autodidact who valued art, music and books but worked an unfulfilling railway job. Bill could be loving and patient, but he also acted out destructive frustrations, assaulting George’s mother and sometimes George and his brothers, too.
Where Beauty Survived is the story of a complicated family, of the emotional stress that white racism exerts on Black households, of the unique cultural geography of Africadia, of a child who became a poet, and of long-kept secrets.

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