Recognized with the 2018 Gordon K. and Sybil Farrell Lewis Award, this book stands out in Caribbean studies. It offers a deep exploration of the region's cultural, historical, and social dynamics, providing insights into the complexities of Caribbean identity. Through meticulous research and engaging narratives, it sheds light on significant themes relevant to Caribbean society, making it an essential read for anyone interested in understanding the intricacies of this vibrant area.
Focusing on the political landscape of Guyana from 2015 to 2017, this collection of newspaper articles critiques the APNU/AFC government's fulfillment of campaign promises and its impact on citizens. The bold and radical commentary highlights issues of anxiety and ambivalence among Guyanese, particularly in the coastal sugar belt, due to corruption and ethnic polarization. It questions the potential benefits of oil revenues amidst concerns of mismanagement and electoral integrity, suggesting a bleak outlook for the country's future following the 2020 elections.
Focusing on the experiences of East Indians in the Caribbean from 1838 to 1920, this work explores the indenture system within the context of imperialism, labor shortages post-slavery, and gender relations. By employing a contemporary analytical lens influenced by subaltern studies, it offers a fresh interpretation that diverges from traditional historical narratives. This book is particularly relevant for historians and social scientists interested in Caribbean history, migration, ethnicity, gender studies, and labor dynamics.
This book is the first comprehensive analysis of Denmark’s solitary experiment with Indian indentured labor on St. Croix during the second half of the nineteenth century. The book focuses on the recruitment, transportation, plantation labor, re-indenture, repatriation, remittances and abolition of Indian indentured experience on the island. In doing so, Roopnarine has produced a compelling narrative on Indian indenture. The laborers challenged and responded accordingly to their daily indentured existence using their cultural strengths to cohere and co-exist in a planter-dominated environment. Laborers had to create opportunities for themselves using their homeland customs without losing the focus that someday they would return home. Indentured Indians understood that the plantation system would not be flexible to them but rather they had to be flexible to plantation system. Roopnarine’s concise analysis has moved Indian indenture from the margin to mainstream notonly in the historiography of the Danish West Indies, but also in the wider Caribbean where Indians were indentured.