When asked, as in Derek Walcott's poem, "Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs? / Where your tribal memory?" my characters answer as in that poem, "Sirs, / in that grey vault. The sea. The sea / has locked them up." My characters can only tear into pieces, both history and Jefferys' observations, they can only deliberately misplace directions and misread observations. They can take north for south, west for east. Anywhere they live is remote. They can in the end impugn the whole theory of directions. They inhabit everywhere, mostly the metropoles of North America and Europe. Their lives take any direction at any moment.

— A Map to the Door of No Return by Dionne Brand (Page 203)