Searching for Serafim
The Life and Legacy of Serafim "Joe" Fortes
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The life and legacy of Serafim "Joe" Fortes, a trailblazing Black lifeguard, who became a cultural icon in a racist society
Searching for Serafim is a layered exploration of the life of Vancouver's first lifeguard, Serafim "Joe" Fortes. A Trinidad native who arrived on the shores of Canada in 1885, Fortes was heralded as a hero in Vancouver for saving dozens of people from drowning, and his funeral drew the largest crowd ever recorded in the city's history. Since his passing, Fortes has been commemorated with a Canada Post-issued stamp and local buildings named in his honour. Yet, little has been discussed about how he navigated an openly white supremacist society as an Afro Latino man.
In Searching for Serafim, author Ruby Smith Diaz seeks to unravel the complicated legacy of a local legend to learn more about who Fortes was as a person. She draws from historical documents to form an insightful critique of the role that settler colonialism and anti-Black racism played in Fortes's publicized story and reconstructs his life, from over a century later, through a contemporary Black perspective, weaving poetry and personal reflections alongside archival research.
The result is a moving and thought-provoking book about displacement, identity, and dignity. Searching for Serafim conjures a new side to one of Vancouver's most beloved - and misunderstood - public figures.
With black-and-white photos.
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Reviews
The legacy of Serafim Fortes is immense, and Ruby Smith Diaz is to be commended for bringing to light this multilayered history by documenting the crucial role Fortes played in early twentieth-century Vancouver's development. In Searching for Serafim, Diaz places Fortes at the centre of Black BC history, sharing his riveting transnational story and how he changed British Columbia. -Afua Cooper, professor of Black and women's history, University of Toronto
We have been waiting a century for this book, for Ruby Smith Diaz to honour and appreciate Serafim "Joe" Fortes, a man who carried a city's authoritarian affection on his shoulders. Using diverse forms and modes of discourse, from deeply researched biography to engaged personal narrative to lucid poetry, Searching for Serafim is, quite simply, the single most important work on Fortes and a stunning contribution to the literature of Vancouver. This is the book to remember him by and through which we might understand how Blackness can survive and resonate on these shores. -Wayde Compton, author of The Outer Harbour
Gorgeously layered, Ruby Smith Diaz's Searching for Serafim deftly interweaves the remarkable life of Serafim Fortes with a powerful interrogation of the conditions structuring Black diasporic life in Canada. -Robyn Maynard, author of Policing Black Lives and co-author of Rehearsals for Living
This is a book of astounding artistry, anchored in the rigorous and world-building genealogy of the Black feminist radical tradition. In Searching for Serafim, Diaz honours the life and legacy not only of Serafim Fortes but of Black and Indigenous ancestors on these lands and daylights transnational struggles against empire and white supremacy over five centuries. This must-read book skillfully weaves archives, narrative, and poetry while calling on us to imagine our lives and liberation anew. -Harsha Walia, author of Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism
Searching for Serafim is an exquisitely written book about a figure both emblematic and enigmatic. Ruby Smith Diaz powerfully illuminates both the necessity and limits of archival research, recovering Black life from white 'celebration' and critically reimagining a past that speaks to the urgencies of our present and future. -David Chariandy, author of Brother and Soucouyant
Perhaps reminiscent of Nabokov's Pale Fire, Searching for Serafim is a thoughtful unpacking of how we understand biography and what we bring from our own identities and positions in history to the investigative process. -Richmond News
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