3 Review(s)

Dr Yvonne Bobb-Smith explores the knowledge and history of resistance of Caribbean women in Canada, using her own journey as a personal place from which to navigate the generalised experience of settlement and adjustment in the Diaspora. I Know Who I Am investigates the stories of 45 Caribbean women of different backgrounds and heritages. Bobb-Smith presents their conceptualisation of the experiences of racism and sexism in their everyday lives and their strategizing resistance. This book is about empowerment in the lives of Caribbean women. This empowerment is seen as an enabling mechanism to resist an 'immigrant woman' identity, imposed through racism and sexism during the period of adjustment in Canada. Bobb-Smith uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine subjectivity, experience, agency, and resistance in the lived experiences of Caribbean women in Canada. She demonstrates that the historical past left a legacy of domination and resistance. She further shows how Caribbean women's activism in community organising constructed an alternative women's movement in Canada.Her voice emerges as a strong contribution to the discourse of identity, and the re-imagining of "home" as an educative institution and process.