Indians in the Caribbean  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Active Voice reviews Gaiutra Bahadur’s book Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture and wonders whether “banning words or proscribing them ever achieves the desired outcome”:
Should we be trying to sanitize history or recording it in all its ugliness for the benefit of future generations? Can we ever liberate the word ‘Coolie’ from the unbearable weight of its history if its contemporary namesakes continue to work under the backbreaking conditions they do? These are hard questions for hard times.