Abstract
Inspired by her tertiary educational journey, Surajbali suggests that the passage of time which separates scholars of Indo-Caribbean feminism generationally has both opened up a richly discursive and poetic space for theorizations that build upon the work of feminist predecessors and has been indispensable to the identity formation of younger generations of Indo-Caribbean scholars and students. Drawing upon the work of several scholars and novelists—including Ramabai Espinet, Gaiutra Bahadur, Peggy Mohan, Mariam Pirbhai, Shani Mootoo, Shalini Puri, and Brinda Mehta—Surajbali notes that the emergence of a uniquely Indo-Caribbean feminist epistemology has been shaped by the application of a women-centered, jahaji-bhain lens to understandings of Indo-Caribbean history and identity as well as the materialization of theoretical notions such as kala pani hybridity and dougla poetics.
Works Cited
Bahadur, Gaiutra. 2013. Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Baksh-Soodeen, Rawwida. 1998. Issues of Difference in Contemporary Caribbean Feminism. Feminist Review 59: 74–85.
Cheddie, Stephanie. 2005. Being ‘Brown’ in a Small White Town: Young Guyanese Women Negotiating Identities in Canada. M.A. Thesis, University of Toronto.
Espinet, Ramabai. 1989. The Absent Voice: Unearthing the Female Epistemology of Cane. Paper presented at the University of Toronto, Ontario, July.
Gopie, Kamala-Jean. 1993. The Next Indo-Caribbean Generation in Canada. In Indo-Caribbean Resistance, ed. Frank Birbalsingh, 85. Toronto: TSAR.
Gregg, Veronica. 1998. ‘Yuh Know Bout Coo-Coo? Where Yuh Know Bout Coo-Coo?’ Language and Representation, Creolisation and Confusion in ‘Indian Cuisine’. Caribbean Quarterly 44(1/2): 81–92, 200.
Hosein, Gabrielle. 2004. Gender, Generation and Negotiation: Adolescence and Young Indo-Trinidadian Women’s Identities in the Late Twentieth Century. M.Phil. Thesis. The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago.
———. 2017. Dougla Poetics and Politics in Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought: Reflection and Reconceptualization. In Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought: Genealogies, Theories, Enactments, ed. Gabrielle Hosein and Lisa Outar, 205–223. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hosein, Gabrielle, and Lisa Outar. 2017. Introduction: Interrogating an Indo-Caribbean Feminist Epistemology. In Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought: Genealogies, Theories, Enactments, ed. Gabrielle Hosein and Lisa Outar, 1–19. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Jahajee Sisters: Empowering Indo-Caribbean Women. 2005. Website. http://www.jahajeesisters.org/2015.
Kanhai, Rosanne. 2012. Kamla at the Apex: Reflections on Indo-Caribbean Feminism. In Indo-Caribbean Feminisms: Charting Crossings in Geography, Discourse and Politics, eds. Gabrielle Hosein and Lisa Outar. Special issue, Caribbean Review of Gender Studies 6: 1–7.
Mahabir, Joy, and Mariam Pirbhai. 2012. Critical Perspectives on Indo-Caribbean Women’s Literature. New York: Routledge.
Mehta, Brinda J. 2004. Diasporic (Dis)locations: Indo-Caribbean Women Writers Negotiate the Kala Pani. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press.
——— 2010. Indianités Francophones: Kala Pani Narratives. L’Esprit Créateur 50(2): 1–11.
Mohammed, Patricia. 2009. Morality and the Imagination – Mythopoetics of Gender and Culture in the Caribbean: The Trilogy. South Asian Diaspora 1 (1): 63–84.
———. 2017. A Vindication for Indo-Caribbean Feminism. In Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought: Genealogies, Theories, Enactments, ed. Gabrielle Hosein and Lisa Outar, 23–35. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mohan, Peggy Ramesar. 2007. Jahajin. New Delhi, India: HarperCollins Publishers and the India Today Group.
Mootoo, Shani. 1993. Out on Main Street & Other Stories. Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers.
Niranjana, Tejaswini. 2006. Mobilizing India: Women, Music, and Migration between India and Trinidad. Durham: Duke University Press.
Pirbhai, Mariam. 2010. The Jahaji-Bhain Principle: A Critical Survey of the Indo-Caribbean Women’s Novel, 1990–2009. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 45(1): 37–56.
Puri, Shalini. 1997. Race, Rape, and Representation: Indo-Caribbean Women and Cultural Nationalism. Cultural Critique 36: 119–163.
———. 2004. The Caribbean Postcolonial: Social Equality, Post-Nationalism, and Cultural Hybridity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Shukla, Sandhya Rajendra. 2003. India Abroad: Diasporic Cultures of Postwar America and England. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Trotz, Alissa. 2007. Red Thread: The Politics of Hope in Guyana. Race & Class 49 (2): 71–79.
Ward, Abigail. 2013. Assuming the Burden of Memory: The Translation of Indian Indenture in Peggy Mohan’s Jahajin. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 48(2): 269–286.
Women Speak: Women Tell their Stories of Discrimination. 2015. Website. http://womenspeak.tumblr.com/2015.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Surajbali, P.D. (2016). Indo-Caribbean Feminist Epistemology: A Personal and Scholarly Journey. In: Hosein, G.J., Outar, L. (eds) Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought. New Caribbean Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55937-1_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55937-1_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-57079-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-55937-1
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)