Review by Choice Review
This book is about women's campaigns to organize transition houses and services for battered women in four smaller Canadian cities and towns in the 1970s and 1980s. Historian Janovicek (Univ. of Calgary) examined transition house records and extensively interviewed past and current staff and organizers. As a result, she shows that feminists working in rural areas first had to change the entrenched view that family violence was primarily an urban phenomenon. She uncovers how community dynamics, such as competition for limited resources with other community groups and community attitudes toward violence against women, both impeded and shaped the organizing strategies for development of transition houses in these communities. With three chapters that focus on transition houses with a predominantly Aboriginal clientele, Janovicek differentiates Aboriginal women's theorization of violence in their communities and reveals that it was not simply an adaptation of feminist analysis of violence against women. Thus, the author delicately points out the movement's shortcomings as well as its hard-won achievements. An appendix lists the interviewees and the general interview guide, and extensive notes direct readers to other historical and theoretical works relevant to the study. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. G. Bruyere Nicola Valley Institute of Technology
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
