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The Odyssey of Indenture
University Of Chicago Press
November 2013
On Sale: November 1, 2013
316 pages
ISBN: 0226034429
EAN: 9780226034423
Kindle: B00FXMPJJC
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Biography
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.
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