Jahaji

Born in Guyana, Frank Birbalsingh is a professor of English at York University in Toronto. He is a pioneering scholar of Indo-Caribbean studies and edited the ground-breaking collections of studies Indenture and Exile and Indo-Caribbean Resistance.

Indians have lived in the Caribbean for more than a hundred and sixty years, ever since they took to the ships to work on the sugar plantations. Jahaji (the term meaning "ship traveler") brings together a representative selection of Indo-Caribbean fiction from three generations of writers. Together, the sixteen writers included here give us an imaginative depiction of the experiences of their people across a span of fifty years--the hopes, aspirations and frustrations of life in colonial Trinidad and Guyana, the post-independence tribulations of third-world citizens, and the quest for meaning and identity in the second migration to Canada, the United States, and Britain. Featuring work by: Ismith Khan, Elahi Baksh, Jan Shinebourne, Sharlow Mohammed, Madeline Coopsammy, Narmala Shewcharan, Harishchandra Khemraj, Sasenarine Persaud, Cyril Dabydeen, Rooplall Monar, Marina Budhos, Christine Singh, Shani Mootoo, Rabindranath Maharaj, Rajnie Ramlakhan, Raywat Deonandan