Short stories
Backdam People
Rooplall Monar · 1985
Synopsis
On the sugar plantations of British Guiana, from the thirties to the early fifties, Indian labourers live in the logies and walk before dawn to the backdam, the far end of the cane fields. Between accommodation and resistance, open defiance and small tricks to escape the hardest work, they defend their community and their culture. The stories move from the comic to the tragic, in the labourers' Creole, mixed with Hindi.
Context
The collection appeared in 1985 in Leeds from Peepal Tree, with an introduction by Jeremy Poynting and a glossary, then in a new edition in 1987; it was reprinted in 2022. Its author, noticed as early as 1967 for a prize-winning text, received in 1987 a special jury prize for his contribution to Guyanese literature. The Journal of West Indian Literature holds the book to be essential reading, carried by humour, orality and emotion.
Who it is for
For discovering the world of the Indo-Guyanese sugar plantations, told in the language of those who worked there.
Prizes and reception
Peter Nazareth, favourable to the collection, nevertheless regrets that the dialect, used throughout, puts all events on the same level.
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