I Know Who I Am: A Carribean Woman's Identity in Canada

271 Pages·2003·11.9 MB·English

by  Yvonne Bobb-Smith

I Know
Who I Am
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I Know
Who I Am
A CARIBBEAN WOMAN'S
IDENTITY IN CANADA
YVONNE BOBB-SMITH
Women's Press/Tor onto
I Know Who I Am: A Caribbean Woman's Identity in Canada
By Yvonne Bobb-Smith
First published in 2003 by
Women's Press, an imprint of Canadian Scholars' Press Inc.
180 Bloor Street West, Suite 801
Toronto, Ontario
M5S2V6
www.womenspress.ca
Copyright © 2003 Yvonne Bobb-Smith and Canadian Scholars' Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No
part of this publication may be photocopied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise, without the
written permission of Canadian Scholars' Press, except for brief passages quoted for review
purposes. In the case of photocopying, a licence from Access Copyright may be obtained: The
Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, One Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, M5E
1E5, [phone], fax [phone], toll-free 1-800-893-5777, www.accesscopyright.ca.
"Praise Song for Miz Bob," by Ramabai Espinet, is copyright © Ramabai Espinet. All rights
reserved.
Every reasonable effort has been made to identify copyright holders. Women's Press would be
pleased to have any errors or omissions brought to its attention.
Canadian Scholars' Press/Women's Press gratefully acknowledges financial support for our
publishing activities from the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, the
Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP),
and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit Program and
through the Ontario Book Initiative.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Bobb-Smith, Yvonne, 1931-
I know who I am : a Caribbean woman's identity in Canada
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-88961-414-8
1. Women, Black—Canada. 2. Blacks—Canada—Race identity. 3. Caribbean Canadians.
4. Race discrimination—Canada. I. Tide.
HQ1453.B62 2003 305.48'8969729071 C2003904414-9
Cover design by Drew Hawkins
Text design by Susan Thomas/Digital Zone
Text layout by Brad Horning
03 04 05 06 07 08 6 5 4 32
Printed and bound in Canada by AGMV Marquis Imprimeur Inc.
Canada'
Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not
available for inclusion in the eBook.
For
Youthdawtas and youthsons
All pickney an dem
Ovah de world
Fuh allyuh to
Neva fraid
Jus big up
A oo yuh is
For
All the young people everywhere in the world:
Never be afraid to claim your identities.
Image not available
Table of Contents
Preface by Ramabai Espinet
• ix •
Acknowledgments
• xvii •
ONE
Introduction:
Tek de bull by de horn
• 1 •
TWO
Part 1: Caribbean-Canadian Women Self-Define:
Me see meself as...
•19«
Part 2: Who Are Caribbean Women in Canada?:
Mout' open 'toryjump out
•34-
THREE
Interconnected Histories in the Caribbean:
Caribbean Women as Rebels and Spitfires:
Back in a time a hole lot o' we
•-53
FOUR
Looking for that Identity:
Ow arive does know
•85«
FIVE
Imagining Home:
Home full o 'cankala
• 107-
SIX
Home is the Site of Learning Resistance:
Yard tattawa
• 129-
SEVEN
Strategies to Make Canada Home:
We does get troo, bonjay!
• 167 •
EIGHT
An Alternative Women's Movement in Canada:
One day, one day, congotay!
• 191 •
NINE
I Know Who I Am: A Caribbean Woman in Canada:
^4y, ay, is know, ah know, we!
•219-
References
•225-
Index
•239-
Preface
Ramabai Espinet
T
iis is a noisy text — replete with the sounds of Caribbean women's
voices, migrant voices erupting out of an alien space, and giving
voice to experiences hidden from plain sight, swallowed whole or
camouflaged for the necessary purpose of survival. Yvonne's
searching interviews move behind the easy construction of "Strong
Black Caribbean Woman" to find the particularity of her subjects'
individual struggles, their stubbornness, their humour, and the sheer grit
and determination that enabled them to resist adversity and emerge into
creative recognition of their own potentials.
The Caribbean in all its mesmerizing diversity appears on these
pages. The plurality of experience is given substance by ethnic and
racial differences, but there are also cases of overlapping racialized
identities and complex discussions concerning the difficulties in
individual negotiations surrounding this vexed issue of race, often
without resolution. Racialized categories have different valencies
depending on location, and what is important in the Caribbean
becomes contextualized differently in diasporic space, yet in this
text elision is not at all the preferred alternative.
The structure of the work is intriguing, as Yvonne's own
experiences are integrated into the analytical framework of the text,
refracting and problematizing concerns that are personal as well as
deeply political. Considerable risk-taking occurs here as the process
of becoming, of constructing one's unique subjectivity, is carefully
anatomized in order to lay bare the arduous efforts by which these
subjects realize that their recreation of "home" is often deeply
inflected by desires springing from an earlier home.
ix