ESL-Speaking Immigrant Women’s Disillusions: Voices of Health Care in Canada:

This article describes a research project that investigated whether language barriers play a part in immigrant women’s health decreasing when they move to Canada. The findings are then rep-resented in the form of an ethnodrama entitled “ESL-Speaking Im-migrant Women’s Disillusions: Voices of Health Care in Canada.” I suggest that the play is catalytic because it encourages target audiences to empathize with the silenced voices of ESL-speaking immigrant women who live in Canada. I then conclude with a reflection about the potential that the genre of ethnodrama has for social change through its reflexive and critical nature. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI, 2004) ESL-speaking immigrant women’s health decreases when they move to Canada and despite Canada’s public health care system, language barriers may prevent immigrants from accessing it. The compelling nature of this claim lead me to embark on a pilot study that aimed to identify some of the reasons immigrant women’s health decreases when they move to Canada and to see if, in fact, these women do experience linguistic barriers when trying to access health information. The results of my study are presented in the form of an ethnodrama, which engages the audience in a process that involves critical reflection and empathy about real-life situations that often are silenced within the respective culture. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Today, literacy is defined as being able to “read, write, speak proficiently