Abstract
Building on a 2016 collection of essays entitled, Canadian women shaping diasporic religious identities, this 2021 collection of 12 essays aims to present and inspire critical thinking about the relationships between race, gender, and diaspora. Relation and Resistance includes essays by a variety of scholars drawing on a range of approaches such as diaspora studies, women and gender studies, and religious studies. Methodologies utilized include semi-structured interviews and close readings of literary texts.
After a brief introductory essay by the editors, the book is divided into three parts. The first part (Navigating Religion, Nation, and Identity) includes four essays that illustrate how women in diaspora have created (new) spaces for themselves and their communities. In “Grounded Religiosities: Women Navigating Hindu Identity and Social Justice,” Sailaja Krishnamurti focuses on “underground” Hindu religiosity that occurs in marginalized spaces—spaces of queerness, spaces of belonging and intentional community—rather than focusing on “above ground” or mainstream Hindu communities in North America. Through her careful analysis of interviews with 12 South Asian feminist activists, she brings to life the rich and complex religiosity of activism and community engagement that occurs underground.
The second part of the book (Women in Transnational Religious Communities) includes four essays that “complicate two conventional narratives about diaspora”: (i) that diaspora groups are inherently conservative regarding gender roles; and (ii) that gains made by women are a result of immersion in Western liberalism (p. 11). In “Muslim Model Minorities and the Politics of Diasporic Piety,” Nadia Z. Hasan presents her compelling research and analysis of interviews with women who practice diasporic piety in Al-Huda International, a Pakistani women's Islamic education organization that is often described as traditional and inflexible in contrast to more moderate expressions of Islam. These women find themselves at the crossroads of their husbands’ traditional cultural expectations, the neoliberal multiculturalism of Canada and their own sense of belonging—a complex crossroads of misunderstanding and Islamophobia. At the site of these crossroads, they find and exercise their own identity and piety.
The third and final part of the book (Building Relations, Imagining Futures) consists of three essays that envision futures in which traditional and ancestral religious traditions and practices are part of women's solidarity with one another. In “Diaspora, Spirituality, Kinship, and Nationhood: A Métis Woman's Perspective,” Chantal Fiola explores “… Métis and Anishinaabe kinship, spirituality, and nationhood, and how these can inform the discourse on diaspora and improve relationships between Indigenous people, settlers, and newcomers (diasporan and non-diasporan) living on Indigenous lands on Turtle Island (North America)” (p. 260). She notes that the history of the Métis Nation is “intricately tied to colonization, dispossession, forced dispersal and relocation, settlements, and policies of segregation, marginalization, and assimilation that continue to impact Métis people, including our relationships with spirituality” (p. 264). Chantal goes on to say that “we are connected through our ancestors to the beginning of human life” (p. 267) and have a responsibility as good neighbors and human beings to learn about and from each other so that we can have “mino-bimaadiziwin (good, healthy, balanced life)” (p. 268). To have mino-bimaadiziwin means to unlearn and dismantle colonialism and its effects and to reclaim the Métis Nation's own stories, ancestors, and traditions, which, unlike Euro-Christian patriarchal beliefs, do not diminish nor disparage women, other races, nor two-spirit gender identity. This original and important essay fittingly concludes not only this part of the book, but also the book as a whole.
This book contains stories of intersectionality, particularly gender, religion, race, ethnicity, immigration status, sexuality, class, and caste; these stories provide many important lessons for those working in the fields of social work and social work education. As noted in the book's introduction, the essays contribute to conversations about women and religion in three ways. First, women's experiences of displacement, migration, race, and gender are critical for understanding and studying religion in Canada (and in other regions of the world). Second, women shape public discourse about citizenship and multiculturalism while they shape their own private identities within settler-colonial spaces of Canada. Third, women conceptualize and reframe religious traditions in transformative ways that are beneficial to themselves and their communities (p. 3). Fundamentally, this book is about women creating and experiencing a sense of belonging and connectedness, and (as the book title notes) Relationship and Resistance amidst their intersectionalities.
