Gender Negotiations among Indians in Trinidad 1917–1947

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxi

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Patricia Mohammed

   Pages 1-16

3. Crossing the Black Water: From India to Trinidad, 1845–1917

   • Patricia Mohammed

   Pages 17-53

4. Gender in the Definition of Indian Identity in Trinidad

   • Patricia Mohammed

   Pages 54-91

5. Gender Dynamics in the Making of Community

   • Patricia Mohammed

   Pages 92-133

6. The Reconfiguration of Masculinity and Femininity: Negotiating with Myth and Symbols

   • Patricia Mohammed

   Pages 134-174

7. Renegotiating Sexuality

   • Patricia Mohammed

   Pages 175-214

8. Family, Marriage and Love

   • Patricia Mohammed

   Pages 215-261

9. The Troubled Legacy of History and Love

   • Patricia Mohammed

   Pages 262-269

10. Back Matter

    Pages 270-319

    PDF

This book is about the struggles of female and male descendants of Indian indentured migrants in Trinidad in the first half of the twentieth century, each desiring to preserve some aspects of the gender system brought from India between 1845 and 1917, which were important to their continued definition of ethnic identity and community in Trinidad. At the same time the situation of migration allows for challenges to the caste system of Hinduism and, for women and some men, new opportunities to confront the more restricting aspect of Indian patriarchy which followed them across the seas from India.

• gender
• migration
• women

• Centre for Gender and Development Studies, University of the West Indies, Jamaica

  Patricia Mohammed

PATRICIA MOHAMMED is Head of the Centre for Gender and Development Studies at the University of West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica. She has published extensively on gender and feminist studies and is co-editor of Gender in Caribbean Development and co-author with Althea Perkins of Caribbean Women at the Crossroads.

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