Sisters or Strangers?: Immigrant, Ethnic, and Racialized Women in Canadian History

by Franca Iacovetta (Editor), Marlene Epp (Editor)

Spanning two hundred years of history from the nineteenth century to the 1990s, Sisters or Strangers? explores the complex lives of immigrant, ethnic, and racialized women in Canada. The volume deals with a cross-section of peoples – including Japanese, Chinese, Black, Aboriginal, Irish, Finnish, Ukrainian, Jewish, Mennonite, Armenian, and South Asian Hindu women – and diverse groups of women, including white settlers, refugees, domestic servants, consumer activists, nurses, wives, and mothers.
The central themes of Sisters or Strangers? include discourses of race in the context of nation-building, encounters with the state and public institutions, symbolic and media representations of women, familial relations, domestic violence and racism, and analyses of history and memory. In different ways, the authors question whether the historical experience of women in Canada represents a 'sisterhood' of challenge and opportunity, or if the racial, class, or marginalized identity of the immigrant and minority women made them in fact 'strangers' in a country where privilege and opportunity fall according to criteria of exclusion. Using a variety of theoretical approaches, this collaborative work reminds us that victimization and agency are never mutually exclusive, and encourages us to reflect critically on the categories of race, gender, and the nation.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Immigration, Feminism, Gender and Sexuality, Canada

380 pages, Paperback

First published June 7, 2004

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in response to the groundbreaking My Sister's Eyes: An Exploration in Women's History, Sisters or Strangers? complicates narratives around Canadian immigrant and women's history through the exploration of the tensions around and between immigrant, ethnic, and racial identities within Canada. As an edited text, this volume explores immigrant experiences starting from the early 18th century and ending in the postwar period. In emphasizing the racial and ethnic identities of women, this volume pushes back on the notion of a universalist postwar immigration experience and the liberal multiculturalism that Canada prides itself in, demonstrating that "multicultural" was often a limited definition that only applied to "good" (i.e. assimilated) migrants, and that was it applied unevenly (and often racially) to certain groups. As with all edited collections, the essay qualities themselves are a mixed bag, and, at times, limited by the editing done to them to fit into this book. A good text for undergraduate students, as this volume provides a broad, but varied, overview of immigrant experiences in Canada.

[Scott Neigh]

Reviewed here.