Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture
    Unavailable
    Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture
    Unavailable
    Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture
    Ebook552 pages8 hours

    Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture

    By Gaiutra Bahadur

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    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 coolies, disappeared into history. In Coolie Woman—shortlisted for the 2014 Orwell Prize—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.
    Shunned by society, and sometimes in mortal danger, many coolie women were either runaways, widows, or outcasts. Many of them left husbands and families behind to migrate alone in epic sea voyages—traumatic “middle passages”—only to face a life of hard labor, dismal living conditions, and, especially, sexual exploitation. As Bahadur explains, however, it is precisely their sexuality that makes coolie women stand out as figures in history. Greatly outnumbered by men, they were able to use sex with their overseers to gain various advantages, an act that often incited fatal retaliations from coolie men and sometimes larger uprisings of laborers against their overlords. Complex and unpredictable, sex was nevertheless a powerful tool.

    Examining this and many other facets of these remarkable 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. 
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateNov 1, 2013
    ISBN9780226043388

    Read more from Gaiutra Bahadur

    Related to Coolie Woman

    Related ebooks

    Biography & Memoir For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Facing Racism

      Jun 26, 2020

      Facing Racism
      10 min read

    • Article

      Roy’s Return to Form

      Jun 3, 2017

      Roy’s Return to Form
      2 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Ayobami Adebayo

      Dec 13, 2017

      David Miller’s That Glimpse of Truth was a constant companion this year. It is a collection of 100 stories that Miller believes are amongst the finest ever written. While there are a number of writers whose work I wish Miller had included, each story

      1 min read

    • Article

      Why We Write

      Feb 7, 2018

      STEPHANIE STOKES OLIVER has spent her career in magazine and book publishing. Formerly the fashion and beauty merchandising editor at Glamour, founding editor in chief of Heart & Soul, and editor in chief of Essence.com, she most recently served as v

      7 min read

    • Article

      'This Is One Way To Dance' Explores A Life Straddling Congruent Realities

      Jun 4, 2020

      Essayist Sejal Shah brings important, refreshing, and depressing observations about what it means to have dark skin and an "exotic" name, when the only country you've ever lived in is America.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Discovering Ourselves: The Millions Interviews Well-Read Black Girl Glory Edim

      Dec 31, 2018

      I want the reader to be hit with a sense of nostalgia. My hope is that the collection encourages readers to share their own stories. The post Discovering Ourselves: The Millions Interviews Well-Read Black Girl Glory Edim appeared first on The Million

      4 min read

    • Article

      Be Brave, Be Kind

      Apr 12, 2017

      Be Brave, Be Kind
      1 min read

    • Article

      A Salon of One’s Own

      Apr 27, 2017

      A Salon of One’s Own
      9 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Ariel Saramandi

      Dec 8, 2021

      I am writing this essay at the end of November. The Delta variant overran the country almost as soon as our borders reopened. Our hospitals are overwhelmed. The post A Year in Reading: Ariel Saramandi appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      Open Line

      Oct 6, 2019

      Open Line
      2 min read

    • Article

      Contests With Vision

      Apr 12, 2017

      EACH year the literary establishment awards hundreds of prizes—and millions of dollars—to writers. These contests celebrate literature, certainly, but more important, they help shape the next generation of books: The financial support of grants and a

      11 min read

    • Article

      Vote of Confidence

      Oct 10, 2018

      Vote of Confidence
      13 min read

    • Article

      Winds Of Change

      Aug 22, 2021

      The author and journalist writes that despite the gender gains we’ve made in recent years, now is the time for a revived call for change where women are safe and respected. It can take a while to find your tribe. After I left school, I wandered thro

      11 min read

    • Article

      Bathurst's LITERARY BUZZ

      Jun 9, 2023

      Bathurst's LITERARY BUZZ
      3 min read

    Reviews for Coolie Woman

    4.5/5

    6 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words