Policing Black Lives, Revised and Expanded Edition

Robyn Maynard is an author and an assistant professor at the University of Toronto-Scarborough. Her writing on borders, policing, abolition and Black feminism is taught widely in universities across Canada, the United States and Europe.Maynard’s first book, Policing Black Lives: State violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present, is a national bestseller, designated as one of the “best 100 books of 2017” by the Hill Times, listed in The Walrus‘s “best books of 2018,” shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award, the Concordia University First Book Prize and the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction, and the winner of the 2017 Errol Sharpe Book Prize. In 2018 the book was published in French, titled NoirEs sous surveillance. Esclavage, répression et violence d’État au Canada, and won the 2019 Prix de libraires. Her second book, Rehearsals for Living, co-authored with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, is a Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, and CBC national bestseller and was shortlisted for a Governor General’s Award for literary non-fiction, a Toronto Heritage Award, and designated one of CBC’s “best Canadian non-fiction books of 2022” and the “best 100 books of 2022” by the Hill Times. Other awards include “2018 Author of the Year” from Montreal’s Black History Month and the Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQI* Emerging Writers.

• Introduction:: On State Violence and Black LivesChapter: 1: Devaluing Black Life Existence, Demonizing Black Bodies: Anti-Blackness from Slavery to SegregationChapter: 2: The Black Side of the Mosaic: Slavery, Racial Capitalism and the Making of Contemporary Black PovertyChapter: 3: Arrested (In)justice: From the Streets to the Prison Chapter: 4: Law Enforcement Violence Against Black Women: Naming Their Names, Telling Their StoriesChapter: 5: Misogynoir in Canada: Punitive State Practices and the Devaluation of Black Women and Gender-Oppressed PeopleChapter: 6: “Of Whom We Have Too Many”: Black Life and Border RegulationChapter: 7: Destroying Black Families: Slavery’s Afterlife in the Child Welfare SystemChapter: 8: The (Mis)Education of Black Youth: Anti-Blackness in the School SystemChapter: 9: Against the Romance of Police Reform: Expanding Police Power while Undermining Black LiberationChapter: 10: Futures Beyond Policing: Making Police ObsoleteConclusion:: Imagining Black Futures

“Robyn Maynard’s meticulously-researched and compelling analysis of state violence challenges prevailing narratives of Canadian multiculturalism and inclusion by examining how structures of racism and ideologies of gender are complexly anchored in global histories of colonization and slavery. This book should be read not only by those who have a specific interest in Canadian histories and social justice movements but by anyone interested in the abolitionist and revolutionary potential of the Black Lives Matters movement more broadly.”