Pioneers Long Before #MoiAussi: Black Women, Rape Culture, and Digital Feminist Activism – A Reading List by Kharoll-Ann Souffrant
Image of Black Canadian feminist scholars, activists, educators, and organizers. Top row (left to right): Robyn Maynard, Alexandra Pierre, Nathalie Batraville. Middle row (left to right): Jacqueline Benn-John, Kharoll-Ann Souffrant, and Njoki Wane. Bottom row (left to right): Notisha, Massaquoi, Marlihan Lopez, and Delice Mugabo.
A reading list by Kharoll-Ann Souffrant from her teach-in “Pioneers Long Before #MoiAussi: Black Women, Rape Culture, and Digital Feminist Activism in Quebec” for the School for Black Feminist Politics.
On Saturday, August 14th at 4:00 PM EST, scholar, social worker and researcher Kharoll-Ann Souffrant led the teach-in, “Pioneers Long Before #MoiAussi: Black Women, Rape Culture, and Digital Feminist Activism in Quebec". You can watch the teach-in here.
About the teach-in: Within the province of Quebec, Canadian Black women's activism against sexual violence is erased within the mainstream feminist movement both in activist circles and academic research. This invisibilisation is due in part to Quebec's history and Francophone minority status within North America. At the moment, there are little to no studies focusing solely on violence against Canadian Black women, despite the tremendous impact of the #MeToo movement in Quebec. Ironically, most rape crisis shelters in this province fail to reach this vastly underserved population. Since early 2000, the feminist Quebec movement has gained a strong interest in intersectionality theory, as coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw. Despite its strong attraction for diversity and equity principles, challenges remain within mainstream feminism to authentically center the voices of Black women activists and survivors.
This presentation will: (1) Give a broad overview of the history of hashtag activism against rape culture in Quebec, Canada; (2) Explain some of the historical, social and political dynamics at play when it comes to Black women's invisibility, hypervisibility and resistance within the mainstream feminist movement in Quebec both in academia and activist circles: (3) Present the work of some of the leading Black feminist activists and scholars in this province/country; and (4) Showcase the presenter's doctoral thesis project and work in this field.
Watch Kharoll-Ann Souffrant’s teach-in on Youtube.
About the teach-in curator: Born in Montreal & of Haitian descent, Kharoll-Ann Souffrant (she/her/elle) is an award-winning social worker, columnist, author, public speaker, & researcher. She is a doctoral candidate in social work at the University of Ottawa, & a Fulbright & Vanier scholarships recipient. Her thesis project focuses on sexual violence experienced by Black women in Quebec in connection with the #MoiAussi (#MeToo) movement of 2017 & #AgressionNonDénoncée (#BeenRapedNeverReported) movement of 2014. Kharoll-Ann holds a bachelor’s & master’s degree in social work from McGill University and a college diploma in Youth & Adult Correctional Intervention from the Collège Ahuntsic.
She has worked as a volunteer, counselor & social worker with populations with a variety of psychosocial difficulties as well as in the health & social services network for the past 16 years.
She is a part-time lecturer at the University of Montreal. Kharoll-Ann was recently selected as a 2020 United Nations Fellow for People of African Descent by the Office of High Commissioner of Human Rights in the context of the UN International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). She is fluent in English, French & Haitian Creole. You can follow her on Twitter @kasouffrantpro.
Pioneers Long Before #MoiAussi: Black Women, Rape Culture, and Digital Feminist Activism in Quebec - A Reading List
Books
Pierre, A. (2021). Empreintes de résistance – Filiation et récits de femmes autochtones, noires et racisées. Les éditions du remue-ménage.
Jackson, S. J., Bailey, M., & Welles, B. F. (2020). #HashtagActivism : Networks of Race and Gender Justice. MIT Press.
Maynard, R. (2018). NoirEs sous surveillance : Esclavage, répression et violence d’État au Canada. Mémoire d’encrier. (French translation of Policing Black Lives).
Maynard, R. (2017). Policing Black lives: State violence in Canada from slavery to the present. Fernwood Publishing.
Cooper, A. The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montréal.
Wane, Njoki. N., & Massaquoi, Notisha. (2007). Theorizing empowerment : Canadian perspectives on Black feminist thought. Inanna Publications.
Book chapters
Souffrant, K.-A., & Guesdon, I. (2020). La liberté d’importuner comme privilège blanc et bourgeois : L’impensé de la couverture médiatique. Dans J. Brun, De l’exclusion à la solidarité : Regards intersectionnels sur les médias (p. 51‑70). Les éditions du remue-ménage.
Thesis (Master’s or Doctoral)
Sanders, Grace. (2013). La Voix des Femmes : Haitian Women’s Rights, National Politics, and Black Activism in Port-au-Prince and Montreal, 1934-1986. University of Michigan.
Mugabo, Délice. (2016). Geographies and Futurities of Being : Radical Black Activism in a Context of Anti-Black Islamophobia in 1990s Montreal [Master’s thesis]. Concordia University.
Palacios, Lena (2014). Indigenous and Race-Radical Feminist Movements Confronting Necropower in Carceral States. McGill University.
Web Articles
Lopez, Marlihan. (2017). Enjeux et défis de l’appropriation de l’intersectionnalité au sein du mouvement des femmes du Québec. Revue Droits et Libertés.
Lopez, Marlihan (2020) Prison abolition is a feminist struggle.
Souffrant, Kharoll-Ann (2020). The black funnel: #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter and I.
Academic Articles
Onwuachi-Willig, A. (2018). What About #UsToo? : The Invisibility of Race in the #MeToo Movement.
Leung, R., & Williams, R. (2019). #MeToo and Intersectionality : An Examination of the #MeToo Movement Through the R. Kelly Scandal. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 43(4), 349‑371.
Zellars, Rachel B. (2019). “As if we were all struggling together” : Black intellectual traditions and legacies of gendered violence. Women’s Studies International Forum, 77, 1‑8.
Benn-John, Jacqueline. (2016). (Re)Colonizing Black Canadian Women & Routes to Resistance. Race, Gender & Class, 23(1‑2), 150‑165. JSTOR.
Benn-John, Jacqueline. (2019). Decolonization, Contestation and the Voices of Black Women:(Re) Defining Feminist Resistance, Activism and Empowerment. Dans A. Zainub, Decolonization and Anti-colonial Praxis : Shared Lineages (Vol. 8, p. 107‑116). Brill Sense.
Batraville, Nathalie «Au-delà de la fuite : l’afroféminisme face à la violence raciale et sexuelle », Tangence [En ligne], 119 | 2019, mis en ligne le 01 avril 2020, consulté le 23 août 2021.
Bilge, Sirma. (2015). Le blanchiment de l’intersectionnalité. Recherches féministes, 28(2), 9–32.