A decolonizing, intersectional, Black feminist approach to young Black Caribbean-Canadian mothers’ resilience

ABSTRACT Growing research documents how systemic anti-Black racism leads to negative physical and mental health outcomes for Black populations, including Black mothers. There is also increasing attention to the concept of resilience as a way of theorizing how Black persons draw on strategies and resources to avoid, overcome or recover from these experiences. This paper, guided by a decolonial framework, intersectional theories and Black feminist epistemologies, reports on key findings from a qualitative, community-based study of young Black motherhood, which included in-depth interviews and focus groups with 13 Black Caribbean-Canadian mothers in the Greater Toronto Area. We demonstrate how barriers caused by anti-Black racism, gender inequalities, xenophobia, and classism operate in the lives of young Black mothers, and we reconfigure resilience from a Eurocentric, individualized concept towards a feminist intersectional one. Findings challenge the conceptualization of ‘normal’, universal, and time-bound development privileged in resilience research; demonstrate that the adversities young Black Caribbean-Canadian mothers encounter in trying to care and provide for their families are rooted in the cumulative intersectional impacts of racialized, gendered, xenophobic, and classed experiences, contexts, and policies across the life course; and highlight the critical importance of working with decolonizing research processes, intersectionality theories, and Black feminist epistemologies.