Touching the shores of home: Guyana, Indo-Caribbeanness, feminism, and return

Abstract

This essay considers my personal negotiations of concepts of home in the context of my immigrant Guyanese status, my Indo-Caribbeanness, my feminism, and my scholarship. Reflecting upon a moment of return to Guyana to discuss my academic work, I explore how one constructs shifting and complex ideas of home in the diaspora. Pointing out the fraught space that Indo-Caribbean identity holds in most people’s understanding of indigeneity, the essay traces what constitutes belonging and transnational citizenship for me—as an immigrant woman, as a member of the indentureship diaspora, as a feminist, and as a scholar working in tandem with those in the Caribbean and elsewhere—and in my work. I here highlight the cross-racial, cross-class, transoceanic solidarities that shape my praxis.