Agent of Change: My Life Fighting Terrorists, Spies, and Institutional Racism
Huda Mukbil (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023), 238 pages, photos, abbreviations, prologue, afterword, acknowledgments, notes.
Huda Mukbil’s Agent of Change is an affecting account of her experiences as—in her words—the first Black, Muslim, female intelligence officer in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). The identifiers are important, not least as a multilingual immigrant whose family fled Ethiopia and eventually Egypt in search of safety before arriving in Montreal in November 1987. As the book’s title suggests, Mukbil’s background is also central to her story as a pathbreaking intelligence officer who found success but also formidable challenges trying to forge a career in the face of systemic discrimination.
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