Abstract
Taking up his Baby album as a text created by his mother, the author considers various strategies she engaged in negotiating tensions of patriarchy, ethnocentrism and nationalism. Characterizing her interventions as “wrecking work,” the author argues for characterization of his mother’s representations as illustrative of Indo-Caribbean feminist practice. Her “interruption” of dominant narratives, he argues, is a heritage of indentureship’s “wrecking work” and potentially informs future social justice–seeking advocacy projects.
Works Cited
Alexander, M. Jacqui. 2005. Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Bahadur, Gaiutra. 2013. Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bragard, Véronique. 1998. Gendered Voyages into Coolitude: The Shaping of the Indo-Caribbean Woman’s Literary Consciousness. Kunapipi: Journal of Postcolonial Writing 20(1): 99–111.
Carter, Marina, and Khal Torabully. 2002. Coolitude: An Anthology of the Indian Labour Diaspora. London: Anthem.
Hosein, Gabrielle. 2012. Modern Negotiations: Indo-Trinidadian Girlhood and Gender Differential Creolization. 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: 1–24.
Kanhai, Rosanne, ed. 1999. Matikor: The Politics of Identity for Indo-Caribbean Women. St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago: University of the West Indies, School of Continuing Studies.
Mohammed, Patricia. 1999. From Myth to Symbolism: The Definitions of Indian Femininity and Masculinity in Post-Indentureship Trinidad. In Matikor: The Politics of Identity for Indo-Caribbean Women, ed. Rosanne Kanhai, 62–99. St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago: University of West Indies, School of Continuing Studies.
Puar, Jasbir. 2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke University Press.
Reddock, Rhoda. 1986. Indian Women and Indentureship in Trinidad and Tobago, 1845–1917: Freedom Denied. Caribbean Quarterly 32(3): 27–49.
Torabully, Khal. 1992. Cale d’étoiles: Coolitude. La Reunion: Azalées Edition.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gosine, A. (2016). My Mother’s Baby: Wrecking Work After Indentureship. 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_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55937-1_4
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)