Welcome to the Black student library guide!
This guide has a specific focus on people of African and Caribbean descent in Toronto and in Canada. It also includes materials on histories of colonialism, slavery, anti-Black racism and resistance.
Toronto has had an African Canadian population from its early days as a settlement. Its inhabitants included enslaved women, men, and children, Black Loyalists, and African Americans escaping enslavement in the United States. It also included rural Black Canadians moving from Nova Scotia or South-Western Ontario, as well as people from the Caribbean and the African continent. Members of each of these groups have contributed to the growth of Toronto as a unique city.
Use the menu to find:
- Books
- eBooks
- Journal Articles
- Databases
- Archives
- Statistics
- Data
- Films
- Documentaries and Community Resources.
Depending on the source, access to these materials may be limited to members of the Humber and University of Guelph-Humber community.
A Different Booklist Collection
Humber Libraries and Humber's Black Student Success and Engagement (BSSE) visited the local Toronto bookstore, A Different Booklist, in December 2022 and purchased a variety of books written by, and related to, Black communities and culture.
This is a print collection of books, available at North Campus and Lakeshore Libraries. Visit our libraries to browse the collection, or check out the list of books in our electronic catalogue here.
Featured Reading Lists
Check out some of our reading lists and library spotlights to find the latest and greatest books on a variety of topics.
- Freedom to Read
- Black Excellence in the Library
- Black Heritage Month: A Journey in Black Joy:
- Celebrating Black Poets
- Read with Pride
- International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
- Black Joy: A Strategy for Freedom, Healing and Reckoning
- Anti-Black Racism in the Workplace: Exploring its Norms, Framework, and Pathways for Resolution
- Beyond Resilience for SELF Preservation
- Unlearning, Disrupting and Dismantling: Necessary Tasks in Addressing Racism
- Uprooting Misogynoir in Our Everyday Lives
- Black Queens and Modern Music Legends
- Black Filmmakers of Hollywood
- Black Excellence in Entrepreneurship
Keywords for Black Studies
Terminology
Black is acceptable in all references to people of African descent. In the United States, African American is used; in Canada, Black-Canadian is most commonly used. African Canadian is sometimes used. Note that Black should be capitalized. (Inclusive Language Guide, 2023 approved by The Black African Employee Resource Group (BAERG)
These are commonly used scholarly terms and phrases that can be used to conduct keyword searches in our Search (Page 1+). Consider using Boolean search strategies to find information for your research.
Search everything on Library website using terms, such as:
- “African-Canadian”
- “African Diaspora”
- "Afro-Caribbean Canadian” OR “Caribbean diaspora"
- “Black Canadian”
- "Black Authors"
For additional keywords and research ideas related to Black communities, histories and cultures, visit this ebook:
Keywords for African American Studies by Introduces key terms, interdisciplinary research, debates, and histories for African American Studies. This volume assembles the keywords of this field for the first time, exploring not only the history of those categories but their continued relevance in the contemporary moment. Taking up a vast array of issues such as slavery, colonialism, prison expansion, sexuality, gender, feminism, war, and popular culture, Keywords for African American Studies showcases the startling breadth that characterizes the field. Connecting lineages of Black knowledge production to contemporary considerations of race, gender, class, and sexuality, Keywords for African American Studies provides a model for how the scholarship of the field can meet the challenges of our social world.
Please note: when doing research, you may need to include outdated and/or problematic terms to see historical works.
Humber Libraries recognizes the controlled vocabulary of library classification systems is shaped within a settler-colonial, patriarchal, hetero-normative, ableist framework, and racist, Eurocentric ideology. Humber Libraries is actively working to acknowledge, amend and/or update unacceptable language with contemporary descriptions.