Creating Archives: Book Talk with Gaiutra Bahadur
6:30 – 8PM
Tuesday greetings! Please join the Asian American / Asian Research Institute for a talk on Creating Archives with Gaiutra Bahadur on Friday, April 4, 2025, from 6:30pm to 8pm, at 25 West 43rd Street, 10th Floor, Room 1000, between 5th & 6th Avenues, Manhattan. This is a hybrid event, both in-person and accessible via Zoom. RSVP required for either methods. In-person attendance is limited to a small number and those that have already read the book Coolie Woman beforehand.
In this interactive talk, part of AAARI’s Localized History Project Workshop Series, Prof. Gaiutra Bahadur will discuss her book, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture (University of Chicago Press, 2013), and dive deep into the processes of creating a living archive, collecting oral stories, and preserving family histories.
About Coolie Woman
Gaiutra Bahadur uncovers the story of her great-grandmother, a young woman who sailed from India to Guiana in 1903 as an indentured laborer, or “coolie,” replacing emancipated slaves on sugar plantations. Through her journey across three continents and extensive research in colonial archives, Bahadur not only uncovers her ancestor’s life but also sheds light on the repressed history of the quarter of a million coolie women. These women, often widows or outcasts, endured harsh labor, poor conditions, and sexual exploitation, using their sexuality as a tool for survival and sometimes inciting uprisings. Coolie Woman is a gripping exploration of gender, power, and survival across generations, revealing a complex, untold history.
Gaiutra Bahadur is an essayist, critic and journalist born in Guyana and raised in New Jersey. A former daily newspaper staff writer and Nieman Fellow, she teaches writing and journalism as an associate professor at Rutgers University in Newark. The recipient of literary residencies from the MacDowell and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy, she is a two-time winner of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Award for prose.