Finding myself : essays on race, politics and culture / Clem Seecharan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Seecharan, Clem, author.

Contributor:

Singh Family Fund.

Indo-Caribbean Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

East Indians.

History.

Intellectual life.

Caribbean Area--History.

Caribbean Area.

Caribbean Area--Intellectual life.

Guyana--History.

Guyana.

Seecharan, Clem.

East Indians--Caribbean Area--History.

Caribbean literature--History and criticism.

Caribbean literature.

East Indians--Caribbean Area--Biography.

Genre:

Biographies.

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Essays.

Physical Description:

338 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm

Other Title:

Essays on race, politics and culture

Place of Publication:

Leeds, England : Peepal Tree, 2015.

Summary:

Clem Seecharan explores two visions of Caribbean history, one public, the other personal. The collection brings together insightful studies of Indo-Caribbean history with autobiographical explorations of family history, self-discovery and the construction of his perspective. His goal is articulating a historiography that is adequate to the Caribbean's ethnic and cultural diversity. Elegantly written, scholarly but accessible, these essays cover new ground in Indo-Caribbean history and also explore aspects of the intellectual legacy of four eminent Caribbean writers and thinkers: Martin Carter, Walter Rodney, V.S. Naipaul, and C.L.R. James. The essays challenge received assumptions on the subject of the migration of indentured labourers from India to the Caribbean, rejecting the view of migrants as victims with no agency in the process. They demonstrate that Indians in Guyana shaped a new persona of hope, rising from the death of caste limitations (whilst sometimes displacing caste prejudices onto the African Guyanese); made much of the possibilities of a more open environment in creating communities rooted in rice, cattle and retail trade; and maximized the benefits of colonial education while claiming the legacy of 'many Indias', part fact, part fiction, in advancing their civil and political rights in Guyana. Within this complex mix are located studies of several Indo-Guyanese personalities, including Cheddi Jagan and Balram Singh Rai, politicians of contrasting visions; and the unsung cricketer, Ivan Madray. But the collection also addresses the unhappy state of Guyana as it approaches fifty years of political independence, still riven by ethnic divisions and wounded by the flight of many Guyanese overseas. Here Seecharan connects his search for a historiography adequate to Guyana's diversity to his wish for a politics free of corruption, ethnocentricity and illusions of El Dorado, and his urging of empathy and generosity in Guyanese people's dealings with each other. Book jacket.

Contents:

"Tiger in the stars" : Ian McDonald and my retrieval of self-belief

Indians in Guyana : an overview

India's awakening and the imagining of the "East Indian Nation" in British Guiana

Sugar in my blood

Girmitiyas and my discovery of India

In Sir Vidia's shadow, out of historical darkness

The shape of the passion : the historical context of Martin Carter's poetry of protest, 1951-64

Balram Singhy Rai's anticommunism and cultural idealism

Whose freedom at midnight? Machinations towards Guyana's independence, May 1966

The anatomy of Cheddi Jagan's Marxism

Culture and ethnicity in post-emancipation Guyana

"Helping lions learn to paint" : Walter Rodney (1942-80)

Empire and family in the shaping of a West Indian intellectual : the young C.L.R. James, a preliminary assessment

Interview with Ivan Madray, the forgotten cricketer : "Da coolie ga mek abi hunt ledda".

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Singh Family Fund.

ISBN:

9781845232474

184523247X

OCLC:

907629170

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description