Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought

Bringing together three generations of scholars, thinkers and activists, this book is the first to trace a genealogy of the specific contributions Indo-Caribbean women have made to Caribbean feminist epistemology and knowledge production. Challenging the centrality of India in considerations of the forms that Indo-Caribbean feminist thought and praxis have taken, the authors turn instead to the terrain of gender negotiations among Caribbean men and women within and across racial, class, religious, and political affiliations.  Addressing the specific conditions which emerged within the region and highlighting the cross-racial solidarities and the challenges to narratives of purity that have been constitutive of Indo-Caribbean feminist thought, this collection connects to the broader indentureship diaspora and what can be considered post-indentureship feminist thought. Through examinations of literature, activism, art, biography, scholarship and public sphere practices, the collection highlights the complexity and richness of Indo-Caribbean engagements with feminism and social justice. 

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements   

Part 1: Tracing the Emergence of Indo-Caribbean Feminist Perspectives

2.      Patricia Mohammed, A Vindication for Indo-Caribbean Feminism          

3.      Preeia D. Surajbali, Indo-Caribbean Feminist Epistemology: A Personal and Scholarly Journey

4.      Andil Gosine, My Mother s Baby: Wrecking Work after Indentureship   

Part 2: Transgressive Storytelling

5.      Alison Klein, `Seeing Greater Distances : An Interview with Peggy Mohan on the Voyages of Indo-Caribbean Women     

6.      Anita Baksh,  Indentureship, Land, and Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought in the Literature of Rajkumari Singh and Mahadai Das              

7.      Lisa Outar, Post-Indentureship Cosmopolitan Feminism: Indo-Caribbean and Indo-Mauritian Women s Writing and the Public Sphere          

Part 3: Art, Archives and Cultural Practices

9.      Kavita Ashana Singh, Comparative Caribbean Feminisms: Jahaji Bhain in Carnival       

10.  Krystal Nandini Ghisyawan, Unsettling the Politics of Identity and Sexuality Among Same-Sex Loving Indo-Trinidadian Women    

11. Angelique V. Nixon, Seeing Difference: Visual Feminist Praxis, Identity and Desire in Indo-Caribbean Women s Art and Knowledge        

12.  Lisa Outar, Art, Violence and Non-Return: An Interview with Guadeloupean Artist Kelly Sinnapah Mary          

Part 4: Dougla Feminisms 

Gabrielle Jamela Hosein, Dougla Poetics and Politics in Indian Feminist Thought: Reflection and Reconceptualization  

15.  Kaneesha Cherelle Parsard, Cutlass: Objects Toward a Dougla Feminist Theory of Representation           

Part 5: New Masculinities and Femininities

16.  Rhoda Reddock, Indo-Caribbean Masculinities and Indo-Caribbean Feminisms: Where are We Now?         

17. Michael Niblett, Belaboring Masculinity: Ecology, Work, and the Body in Michel Ponnamah s Dérive de Josaphat   

18. Stephanie L. Jackson, From Stigma to Shakti: The Politics of Indo-Guyanese Women s Trance and the Transformative Potentials of Ecstatic Goddess Worship in New York City           

Epilogue

Shalini Puri      

Postscript

Shivanee M. Ramlochan

 Notes on Contributors

 Index