Women and Resistance in the Early Rastafari Movement

Dunkley skillfully and meticulously draws on a range of sources, such as the colonial archives and theoretical frameworks, such as Womanism to tell the overlooked story of Rastafari women and their role in challenging colonialism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression. By foregrounding women’s role as active agents, this rich and provocative narrative challenges the perception of early Rastafari women as submissive docile subjects. Indeed, at the inception of the movement, women were instrumental in the introduction of philosophies necessary for the liberation of Black people. Caribbean, and by extension women’s history, will be enriched by the most in-depth exploration to date of Rastafari women. ~Karen Flynn, author of "Moving beyond Borders: A History of Black Canadian and Caribbean Women in the Diaspora"

Dunkley shatters the cliché of the submissive early Rastafari woman. He draws from archival sources and testimonies to bring back to life the women whose contribution was so vital to the development of the Rastafari movement in the first three decades of its history…. This book is an immersion in the complex history of the agency of Black women. ~Hélène Lee, author of "The First Rasta: Leonard Howell and the Rise of Rastafarianism"

Dunkley’s masterful use of archival documents definitively situates early Rastafari Woman as leaders and partners in developing Rastafari. Leveraging histories of Pinnacle, Kemps Hill, Bethel, Beulah, and the judiciary of the colonial government, Dunkley argues that early sistren’s organizing was critical to fighting sexism and racism in the anticolonial struggle against British rule and Creole nationalism in early to mid-20th-century Jamaica. ~Shamara Wyllie Alhassan, author of "Re-Membering the Maternal Goddess: Rastafari Women’s Intellectual History and Activism in the Pan-African World"

In this groundbreaking book, Daive Dunkley forces a rethinking of the common view of Rastafari as fundamentally patriarchal. Drawing on previously neglected oral sources and interrogating and reinterpreting the earliest written documentation, he succeeds in recovering the voices and acts of some of the unheralded women who helped conceive one of the 20th century’s most formidable and creative anticolonial movements. ~Kenneth M. Bilby, author of "True-Born Maroons"

A well-executed use of the historical/biography method which describes clearly the oppression experienced by these women. An oppression deliberately meted out by socio-political realities of the period. Particularly interesting is the Womanist perspective/theology lived by the early Rastafari woman, a position which still impacts the movement today. Dunkley appreciates the guiding principle of religion as the overarching aspect of Rastafari Livity. For the Rastafari woman of the period the challenge was to emphasize equality and unity rather than obedience and deference, thus modelling the life of Empress Menen and H.I.M. Haile Selassie I. A truly rebellious action. ~Eleanor Wint, author of "Marcus Teaches Us"