Quote by Dionne Brand: “I have no country. My passport is green. My country is in you.”

National belonging — symbolized by the passport — does not capture where a person actually lives emotionally and imaginatively. Brand locates home not in a territory or document but in other people: in connection, love, and shared experience that transcends borders.

A Map to the Door of No Return was published in 2001, one year after Brand was appointed to Canada's Order of Canada and the same year as the September 11 attacks, which intensified global conversations about borders, belonging, and national identity. Brand's meditation on the Atlantic slave trade's legacy resonated with questions about where Black diasporic people could call home.

Trinidadian-Canadian poet, novelist, and essayist who was Poet Laureate of Toronto from 2009 to 2012. Her 2001 work A Map to the Door of No Return explores the ongoing legacy of slavery and the Atlantic crossing in shaping diasporic Black identity.