Boulou Ebanda de B’béri

Nina Reid-Maroney

Wanda Thomas Bernard

Women in the “Promised Land” reframes Canadian history through the lens of African Canadian women’s lived experiences. This collection of original essays spans the period from slavery and abolition through to women’s activism in the 20th century, focusing on themes of race, migration, gender, community, religion, and the struggle for social justice. Re-examining familiar figures in African Canadian women’s history, including abolitionist and feminist Mary Ann Shadd Cary and civil rights activist Viola Desmond, the volume considers them in the wider context of scholarship on Canada and the African diaspora. Drawing on insights from cultural studies, communications, literary studies, and visual culture, the contributing authors use rich primary sources to ground their analysis in the details of women’s historical experiences. Together, the chapters work to unsettle Canadian history and demonstrate its urgent relevance to the present, encouraging readers to interrogate the concept of Canada as a “promised land.” Edited by leading scholars in the field, this accessible, interdisciplinary collection includes suggested further readings, chapter overviews, and discussion questions, making it an essential read for students in women’s studies, African studies, and history.

Essays in African Canadian History

Women in the "Promised Land"

Besi Brillian Muhonja

Mothers and Sons: Centering Mother Knowledge makes a case for the need to de-gender the framing and study of parental legacy. The actualization of an entire collection on this dyad foregrounding motherhood without particularizing the absence of fatherhood is in itself revolutionary. This assemblage of analytical, narrative and creative renderings offers cross-disciplinary conceptualizations of maternal experiences across difference and mothering sons at intersections. The authors' mother knowledge, or that of their subjects, delivers new insights into the appellations mother, son, motherhood and sonhood.

Centering Mother Knowledge

Mothers and Sons

Sulaimon Giwa

Delores V Mullings

David Este

Jennifer Clarke

This edited collection focuses on Africentric social work practice, providing invaluable assistance to undergraduate students in developing foundational skills and knowledge to further their understanding of how to initiate and maintain best practices with African Canadians. In social work education and field practice, students will benefit from the depth and breadth of this book's discussions of social, health, and educational concerns related to Black people across Canada. The book's contributors present a broad spectrum of personal and professional experiences as African Canadian social work practitioners, students and educators. They address issues that African Canadians confront daily, which social work educators and potential practitioners need to understand to provide racially and culturally relevant services. The book presents students with an invaluable opportunity to develop their practical skills through case studies and critical thinking exercises, with recommendations for how to ethically and culturally engage in African-centred service provision. In addition, scholars with an interest in Africentric social work practice and research will find this text useful to help support their commitment to advancing racially and culturally relevant learning and teaching.

Africentric Social Work

While the remit of social work professionals is, in general, locality-based, social work has a long tradition of concern about international issues. Broadening Horizons provides an engaging and original contribution to the debate on how to tackle social work problems on a global scale. Filling both a theoretical and a practice gap in the literature, the book discusses the experiences of academics, practitioners and students involved in international exchanges in social work. It draws on a major EU-Canadian exchange project as well as separate projects in countries including South Africa, the USA, China and Australia. The contributors highlight the opportunities and barriers that shaped their experience and give guidance on how to deal with both the practicalities and aspirations of living and working across borders. This book will thus be invaluable both to readers interested in the meaning and realities of international social work and to those hoping to embark on an exchange programme themselves.

International Exchanges in Social Work

Broadening Horizons

This book is about Black social workers breaking barriers and fighting for change, not only for themselves as professionals, but also for their clients and communities. These workers tell their own unique stories in this volume, from gaining entry to social work education to their experiences in social work. They also write about the strategies that made a difference in their lives and the lives of the people they work with. The first section tells the story of Black Social Workers' entry into the profession and chronicles the poignant story of the life, and eventual death, of the Association of Black Social Workers in Montreal from where it spread to Halifax. In the second section, seasoned Black social workers, each trailblazers in their own right, tell their narratives of studying social work and beginning practice in Halifax in the late 1970s to early 1990s. The third section spotlights current students who relate stories of their reasons for entering the social work profession and the barriers they face as they pursue their future career goals. The fourth section focuses on Africentric perspectives and puts forward some findings from exploratory research in this area. The final section explores experiences in a social work program which uses the media to expose students to cultures different from their own as well as some of the students' experiences in interrogating the media itself.

Wanda Thomas Bernard

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