Name Cecil Foster Role Novelist | Education York University | |
 | ||
Books No Man in the House, Genuine Multiculturalism: The Trag, Where race does not matter, Blackness and Modernity, Sleep on - beloved | ||
Cecil Foster (born September 26, 1954) is a Canadian novelist, essayist, journalist, and scholar.
Contents
Biography
Born in Bridgetown, Barbados, where he began working for the Caribbean News Agency as the senior reporter and editor (1975–77), and the Barbados Advocate News as the reporter and columnist (1977–79), Foster emigrated to Canada in 1979. He went on to work for the Toronto Star as a reporter (1979–82). Foster then began working for The Contrast as an editor (1979–82), Transportation Business Management as an editor (1982–83), The Globe and Mail as a reporter (1983–89), The Financial Post as a senior editor (1989), and also served as special adviser to Ontario's Ministry of Culture, through the mid-1990s. His most recent book, Where Race Does Not Matter (2004), explores the potential of multiculturalism in Canada. It also expands on some of his earlier work that deals with issues of race in his own life as well as in the history of Canada. He is well known for exploring race through immigration, and empowers this culture and beliefs through “Blacks in Action”. Foster continues to bring his own personal experiences, and real-life issues to the work that he continues to produce. Island Wings: A Memoir (1998) was written as an autobiography of his own life, and is often referred to as more informative, rather than entertainment. Foster completed his PhD, a phenomenological exploration of the concept of Blackness in Canada, at York University in 2003. His philosophical influences include Hegel, Marx, Alexandre Kojève, Will Kymlicka, Charles Taylor, and former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
Foster is currently an associate professor of sociology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. On January 20, 2014 Foster's new book, Independence was released by HarperCollins Canada.
Foster served as a judge for the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize.