Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture

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About Coolie Woman: The Odyssey Of Indenture

Product Description SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE in 2014      In 1903, a young woman sailed from India to Guiana as a "coolie"--- the British name for indentured laborers who replaced the newly emancipated slaves on sugar plantations all around the world. Pregnant and traveling alone, this woman, like so many of the indentured, disappeared into history. Now, in  Coolie Woman, her great-granddaughter Gaiutra Bahadur embarks on a journey into the past to find her. Traversing three continents and trawling through countless colonial archives, Bahadur excavates not only her great-grandmother's story but also the repressed history of some quarter of a million other coolie women, shining a light on their complex lives.       Many of these women were widows, runaways, or outcasts. Many fled mistreatment, even mortal danger, to migrate alone in epic sea voyages--traumatic "middle passages"--only to face a life of hard labor, dismal living conditions, and, most notably, sexual exploitation. As Bahadur explains, however, it is precisely their sexuality that makes coolie women stand out as figures in history. In a borderland between freedom and slavery--and because these women were so greatly outnumbered by men--sex made them victims at the same time that it gave them sway. And it was a source, at times, of tremendous conflict, from machete murders to entire uprisings.      Examining this and many other facets of these courageous women's lives,  Coolie Woman is a meditation on survival, a gripping story of a double diaspora--from India to the West Indies in one century, Guyana to the United States in the next--that is at once a search for one's roots and an exploration of gender and power, peril and opportunity.  Review “An astonishing document—both a historical rescue mission and a profound meditation on family and womanhood, Gaiutra Bahadur’s Coolie Woman spans continents and centuries, the private and the national, to bring to light the extraordinary lives of the author’s great-grandmother and the other quarter of a million coolie women that came to the New World as indentured laborers. Bahadur’s meticulous research and tireless perseverance have restored an important chapter in our histories—outstanding work.” (Junot Diaz, author of This Is How You Lose Her) “Gaiutra Bahadur’s book made me realize how the experience of a whole generation of women like her great-grandmother profoundly challenges the various stereotypes we have. This is a highly original combination of careful scholarship and well-told personal journey.” (Adam Hochschild, author of Bury the Chains) “Gaiutra Bahadur’s pathbreaking book carefully excavates an imperial history of violence and uprooting. But this is no simple account of victimhood. It shows, with understated literary power, the bitterly paradoxical nature of colonial modernity: the unbearable dialectic between enslavement and liberation that many unsung millions underwent in their private lives.” (Pankaj Mishra, author of From the Ruins of Empire) “With the exhilarating meticulousness of a period film,  Coolie Woman recreates a vanished world and casts a personal searchlight on the saga of indenture. Gaiutra Bahadur rescues her great-grandmother Sujaria and other coolie women from the archives by means of a narrative that is both scholarly and soulful. In detailing the bitter journeys of her forebears, in making their astonishing experiences real and sympathetic, and in registering the complexities of their lives—not least the extent to which they made choices where one might have expected helplessness—Bahadur honors their memories and shows herself their worthy descendant.” (Teju Cole, author of Open City) “Every so often a history book comes along that grips you into a cascade of compelling narrative. The writer excavates new ore from old seams. Coolie Woman is such a book, destined for a unique place in the multi-mirror of Caribbean culture.” (John Agard,