We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women's History

by Peggy Bristow (Editor), Linda Carty, Afua Cooper

Despite the increasing scope and authority of women's studies, the role of Black women in Canada's history has remained largely unwritten and unacknowledged. This silence supports the common belief that Black people have only recently arrived in Canada and that racism is also a fairly recent development. This book sets the record straight. The six essays collected here explore three hundred years of Black women in Canada, from the seventeenth century to the immediate post-Second World War period. Sylvia Hamilton documents the experiences of Black women in Nova Scotia, from early slaves and Loyalists to modern immigrants. Adrienne Shadd looks at the gripping realities of the Underground Railroad, focusing on activities on this side of the border. Peggy Bristow examines the lives of Black women in Buxton and Chatham, Ontario, between 1850 and 1865. Afua Cooper describes the career of Mary Bibb, a nineteenth-century Black teacher in Ontario. Dionne Brand, through oral accounts, examines labourers between the wars and their recruitment as factory workers during the Second World War. And, finally, Linda Carty explores relations between Black women and the Canadian state. This long overdue history will prove welcome reading for anyone interested in Black history and race relations. It provides a much-needed text for senior high school and university courses in Canadian history, women's history, and women's studies. Winner of the Ontario Historical Society's 1996 Joesph Brant award.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Canada

248 pages, Paperback

First published August 18, 1994

Reviews

[Rissa (rissasreading) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm so happy to have the opportunity to read this as supplemental reading for my university course. There isn't much written or shared about black people's experiences in Canada, specifically surrounding black women's work in Canada. This book was put together by six women to correct that. We love to see it.

This book has a lot of information on both Canadian policies and laws as well as how the Fugitive Slave Law garnered reactions in Canada. It starts off with the beginning of things, when slaves were running to their freedom and crossing the border to Canada to come to, what they thought, was the promised land, and ends with the 1990s and 1950s domestic immigration practices of the Canadian government. It's definitely interesting to note that a lot of the struggles I read in this that was experienced by black people mirrored the experiences laid out in Indigenous Women and Work From Labor to Activism. It's also very important to note that these communities thrived through the women and the care they provided, such as starting schools for the young people to learn at. The one difference I noticed was that where the church is really a force of negative experiences for the indigenous communities in Canada, the church opened up the doors for black women to come together and learn about women's rights.

I also noticed that a lot of the things talked about within the book in regards to the gendered division of work are still easily noticeable today in our workforce. Times never really change do they?