Oral History Interview with Jebaroja Singh
Dr. Jebaroja Singh is a Dalit woman, and an assistant professor of interdisciplinary studies including Anthropology, Sociology and Women and Gender Studies. She is also the author of Spotted Goddesses: Dalit women's agency-narratives on Caste and Gender Violence (Contributions to Transnational Feminism). She was born and raised in Chennai and is currently based in Rochester, New York.
Ramu by Moses Bhagwan
Moses Bhagwan wrote "Ramu," a moving tribute to an archetypal figure in Guiana's history, the sugar cane cutter carrying his cutlass home from the fields, in 1964. At the time, Bhagwan was a political prisoner in a detention camp run by British colonial authorities. He wrote the poem, another one dedicated to his wife, and another invoking freedom in a notebook given to him by his sister.
repeat movement until by Nadia Misir
"repeat movement until" was composed by Nadia Misir, who holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens College. The poem gives elegaic voice to a wedding ring handed down in a family and evokes its experience with labor, with skin, with surfaces, with temperatures, with grandmothers and granddaughters, with death.
One Last Bag by Elizabeth Jaikaran
"One Last Bag" was composed by Elizabeth Jaikaran, the author of the short story collection Trauma. With its buoyant wit, it levitates what is otherwise heavy: the weight of an overstuffed suitcase and, through the figure of a migrant trying to please her Queens cousin, the weight of family expectations.
Wazir and Jordanna Ishmael Oral History
Jordanna Ishmael, an attorney at a law firm in Miami, speaks to her father Wazir Ishmael about his journey as a ten year-old boy from the sugar plantation in Berbice, Guyana where his father had worked as a "dispenser" (a cross between a pharmacist and physician) to the Bentham Grammar School, a boarding school in England. When he arrived there in 1970, he was one of two children of color there.
Photograph of Wazir Ishmael
Wazir Ishmael is pictured here, at age 10, with his father Yussuph Ishmael, a dispenser at the Rose Hall Sugar Estate in Guyana, and Alan Dabbs, whose family Wazir stayed with during school holidays when he was in boarding school.
Oral History Interview with Mimi Mondal
Mimi Mondal is an Indian speculative fiction writer based in New York and the first writer from India to have been nominated for any Hugo Award. She is a Dalit, Indian woman.
Oral History Interview with Mani Soma
Mani Soma performs as the drag artist KaMANI Sutra. In the oral history, Mani describes growing up in India, navigating a queer relationship as a teenager, helping to organize a flash mob at Osmania University, finding south asian LGBTQ community after immigrating to the DC area, and their experiences performing as a drag artist.
Content warning: Suicide
Parbatee Mohan and Dan Persaud Oral History Interview
Daniel Persaud, a musician, interviews his grandmother Parbatee Mohan, a seamstress from a village in Berbice, Guyana about emigrating, her expectations of life in the United States, working to build their American Dream and her recent visit to India. The interview took place in the enclave of "Little Guyana" in Richmond Hill, Queens.
Oral History Interview with Marina
Marina describes her experiences growing up in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, immigrating to the U.S. with family, and navigating her sexuality as a bisexual muslim woman.