Author Description

In Iris de Freitas Brazao, Legal Luminary and Trailblazer: Caribbean Canada, Wales, England 1896-1989, Dr. Joanne Collins-Gonsalves honours the legacy of Iris de Freitas Brazao, the first female Barrister-at-law in the Commonwealth Caribbean. This publication chronicles at length the phases of Iris de Freitas Brazao’s life, including her early history and educational journey, which at the tertiary level involved the University of Toronto in Canada, Aberystwyth University in Wales, the University of Oxford, and culminated at The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, in England, where she was called to the Bar in 1929, a significant and note-worthy achievement for a woman in the 1920s. The book concludes with an analysis of her legal career, the challenges she faced, as well as awards and honours. Iris de Freitas Brazao’s legal and service accomplishments are legendary. Her key historic appointments and roles from the 1930s include the first female Crown Prosecutor in British Guiana (now Guyana); the first woman in British Guiana to prosecute a murder trial; the only woman to be a signatory to registration of the British Guiana Workers’ League; the only female member of the British Guiana Franchise Commission in the 1930s; and the first female member of the British Guiana Public Service Commission in the 1950s; among other notable positions. Iris challenged the status quo and created history not only within the sphere of law but in various facets of women’s rights. Iris’s journey is therefore a key record of the history of aspects of the struggle of women in Guyana and significantly adds to the body of literature in this respect. She was a legal luminary who shattered the glass ceiling in the legal profession in Guyana and the wider Caribbean.