ABSTRACT

This book is the first collection on Indo-Caribbean women's writing and the first work to offer a sustained analysis of the literature from a range of theoretical and critical perspectives, such as ecocriticism, feminist, queer, post-colonial and Caribbean cultural theories. The essays not only lay the framework of an emerging and growing field, but also critically situate internationally acclaimed writers such as Shani Mootoo, Lakshmi Persaud and Ramabai Espinet within this emerging tradition. Indo-Caribbean women writers provide a fresh new perspective in Caribbean literature, be it in their unique representations of plantation history, anti-colonial movements, diasporic identities, feminisms, ethnicity and race, or contemporary Caribbean societies and culture. The book offers a theoretical reading of the poetics, politics and cultural traditions that inform Indo-Caribbean women's writing, arguing that while women writers work with and through postcolonial and Caribbean cultural theories, they also respond to a distinctive set of influences and realities specific to their positioning within the Indo-Caribbean community and the wider national, regional and global imaginary. Contributors visit the overlap between national and transnational engagements in Indo-Caribbean women's literature, considering the writers' response to local or nationally specific contexts, and the writers' response to the diasporic and transnational modalities of Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean communities.

chapter |21 pages

Introduction

Tracing an Emerging Tradition

part |115 pages

Indo-caribbean Localities, Feminist Poetics

chapter |23 pages

Recasting Jahaji-Bhain

Plantation History and the Indo-Caribbean Women's Novel in Trinidad, Guyana and Martinique

chapter |22 pages

Domestic Altars, Female Avatars

Hindu Wives and Widows in Lakshmi Persaud's Raise the Lanterns High

chapter |23 pages

“Music and a Story”

Sound Writing in Ramabai Espinet's The Swinging Bridge

chapter |28 pages

Carnival Poetics and Politics

Lakshmi Persaud's For the Love of My Name and Niala Maharaj's Like Heaven

chapter |17 pages

The Broad Breast of the Land

Indo-Caribbean Ecofeminism and Mahadai Das

part |114 pages

Transnational Realities, Diasporic Subjectivities

chapter |21 pages

The Kala Pani Imaginary

A Survey of Indo-Caribbean Women's Poetry

chapter |21 pages

Indo-Trinidadian Identities and Sexuality

A Survey of Shani Mootoo's Fiction

chapter |24 pages

Revising Female

Ramabai Espinet's Reconstruction of an Indo-Trinidadian Diaspora in The Swinging Bridge