Salima and Aliyah Khan Oral History Interview
Salima Khan, a high school teacher and college adjunct lecturer in Queens, converses with her daughter Aliyah, an associate professor of English Literature at the University of Michigan and author of Far From Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Caribbean.
Sheorani and Kamelia Kilawan Oral History
Sheorani Kilawan, a claims supervisor at the New York State Insurance Fund, speaks with her daughter Kamelia Kilawan, a journalist who worked most recently for Al Jazeera English in Qatar, at their family home in South Ozone Park, Queens.
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.
Mohaiyuddin Khan, 1921
The U.S. Census, passport applications and naturalization petitions unfold the story of Mohaiyuddin Khan, a commercial trader who married, then divorced, a German-American woman.
Handwritten letter from Mohaiyuddin Khan
This handwritten petition for a passport in 1921 provides a glimpse of Khan's transnational life and the circuits he traveled, from London to Calcutta to Brooklyn.
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.
Shew Persaud's Naturalization Petition
Shew Persaud was born in Georgetown, Guiana's colonial capital, in 1881. After arriving in the United States on a ship that sailed via Barbados, he petitioned to become a U.S. citizen twice, in 1917 and 1924. The first time, he was working as a dishwasher and living in West Harlem, separated from his wife, who was still in British Guiana.
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.
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.