Coolie Woman

Coolie Woman (full title: Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture) is a book written by Gaiutra Bahadur and co-published in 2013 by Hurst and Company of LondonTemplate:Sfn in Europe and the University of Chicago Press in the US.Template:Sfn Editions from Hachette in India in 2013 and Jacana in South Africa in 2014 followed.Template:Citation needed

The book is a biography of Sujaria, the great-grandmother of the authorTemplate:Sfn and simultaneously an exploration of the indentured labor system, which was practiced in the Caribbean.Template:Sfn Tracing Sujaria's 1903 journey as a Brahmin caste woman from Bihar, India's poorest state, to the sugarcane plantations of British Guiana,Template:Sfn Bahadur wove both archival and published records,Template:Sfn as well as folk and oral sources,Template:Citation needed to tell the broader story of "the exodus and settlement of Indian women to the Caribbean".Template:Sfn She critically examined the Hindu caste system, Indian family structure, and the indenture system itself in an attempt to understand how each of these shaped her grandmother and how migration changed or affected women's lives.Template:Sfn The word coolie, which throughout the British Empire referred to indentured workers from Asia, is considered a pejorative.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Bahadur chose the title to acknowledge the stigmaTemplate:Sfn but also as a metaphor for the baggage women carried as a result of colonialism.Template:Sfn

Reviewers have pointed to the importance the work holds for a "neglected area of scholarship", about the age when Asian indentured workers replaced African slaves on plantations in the Caribbean,Template:Sfn as well as its exploration of feminist themes of societal and family oppression, poverty, lack of power, sexual abuse and violence.Template:Sfn Praised for her storytelling, as well as academic treatment, the book has appeal for both scholars and casual readers.Template:Sfn Coolie Woman was shortlisted for multiple literary awards, including the Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature (2014)Template:Sfn and the Orwell Prize in Britain (2014).Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn It won the 2014 Caribbean Studies Association's Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Prize, which annually recognizes interdisciplinary works that examine Caribbean culture and society, have been published within the preceding three years, and are written in one of the languages prevalent in the region.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The Chronicle of Higher Education included the book in its round-up of the best scholarly books of the decade in 2020.

References

Bibliography

• Intimacies, Relationships and Socialities: South Asians and Racialist America in the Early Twentieth Century. American Studies({Template:Date).
• Book Reviews: "Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture", by Gaiutra Bahadur. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History({Template:Date).
• Book reviews: "Coolie woman: the odyssey of indenture". Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies({Template:Date).
• A Coolie Woman's Work is Never Done. Asian American Writer's Workshop(31 March 2014). Retrieved 1 November 2016.
• Book reviews: "Coolie woman: the odyssey of indenture". Ethnic and Racial Studies({Template:Date).
• The Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Award 2014—Caribbean Studies Association. Repeating Islands(31 May 2014). Retrieved 1 November 2016.
• Review – Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture, By Gaiutra Bahadur. Hurst £20. The Independent(5 November 2013). Retrieved 1 November 2016.
• 'Coolie Woman' Rescues Indentured Women From Anonymity(19 November 2013). Retrieved 1 November 2016.
• Gaiutra Bahadur. The Orwell Prize. King’s College London(2014). Retrieved 1 November 2016.
• Gaiutra Bahadur, NF '08, Wins Award for Book. Nieman Foundation for Journalism. Harvard University(12 September 2014). Retrieved 1 November 2016.
• Gaiutra Bahadur's Coolie Woman shortlisted for Orwell Prize(1 May 2014). Retrieved 1 November 2016.
• Ten writers vie for the 2014 OCM Bocas Prize. Bocas Lit Fest(25 February 2014). Retrieved 1 November 2016.