Coolie Diaspora: From Indentureship to Transnational Communities

Two groundbreaking works on the history of indentured labor and the Asian diaspora in the Caribbean come into conversation with one another.

In Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture (University of Chicago Press, 2013), Gaiutra Bahadur traces the story of her great-grandmother, who in 1903 journeyed from India to Guyana and, through the excavation of countless colonial archives, reveals the complex lives of a quarter of a million other “coolie women” like her. Pankaj Mishra writes that Coolie Woman, “shows, with understated literary power, the bitterly paradoxical nature of colonial modernity: the unbearable dialectic between enslavement and liberation that many unsung millions underwent in their private lives.”

Kathleen López’s Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History (University of North Carolina Press, 2013) explores the transition of the Chinese from indentured to free migrants and the formation of transnational communities. López demonstrates how Chinese migration, intermarriage, and assimilation are central to Cuban history and national identity during a key period of transition from slave to wage labor and from colony to nation. Praised by Evelyn Hu-Dehart as, “[m]eticulously researched and beautifully written…this is the first serious and comprehensive history of the Chinese in Cuba.” Sukhdev Sandhu (Department of Social & Cultural Analysis) moderates.

RSVP by Monday, November 11 at https://www.eventbrite.com/event/7593437175. 

Co-sponsored by the NYU Center for Multicultural Education & Programs

Venue

Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU

8 Washington Mews New York, NY 10003United States

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