ATREYEE PHUKAN is an associate professor of English at the University of San Diego in California. She is the co-editor of South Asia and Its Others: Reading the Exotic, and co-editor of Home and the World: South Asia in Transition.

• Introduction: Indenture, Creolization, and Literary Imaginary1. Passage and Poetics in Totaram Sanadhya and LalBihari Sharma 2. Repatriation and the "Indian Problem" in Ismith Khan's The Jumbie Bird (1960)           3. The Trope of the Ricefield in Harold Sonny Ladoo's No pain like this body (1972)4. (En)Gendering Indenture in Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night (1992)Conclusion                                                                                                                             AcknowledgmentsBibliographyIndex

"Contradictory Indianness continues the urgent work of uncoupling Indo-Caribbean studies from glances backward at India and rightly identifies Indo-Caribbean literature as a radical and uniquely Caribbean project of challenging orthodoxies and forging belonging. In turning her attention to under-examined writers from the Indo-Caribbean canon, Phukan offers us both an astute explication of post-indentureship aesthetics and a more expansive understanding of how creolization plays out for Indo-Caribbean writers."— Lisa Outar, co-editor of Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought: Genealogies, Theories, Enactments"This is an alternative Caribbean literary history that expands the scope of narratives available for a reading of the Indo-Caribbean through the inclusion of a diverse set of new as well as well-established literary texts. It resituates the idea of the Indo-Caribbean as an analogue to Afro-Caribbean creolizing processes; through this, it also reimagines the connection to India in the making of the indenture stories in the Caribbean. It is deeply observant and wide-ranging in its exciting explorations."— Anjali Nerlekar, author of Bombay Modern: Arun Kolatkar and Bilingual Literary Culture

ATREYEE PHUKAN is an associate professor of English at the University of San Diego in California. She is the co-editor of South Asia and Its Others: Reading the Exotic, and co-editor of Home and the World: South Asia in Transition.

• Introduction: Indenture, Creolization, and Literary Imaginary1. Passage and Poetics in Totaram Sanadhya and LalBihari Sharma 2. Repatriation and the "Indian Problem" in Ismith Khan's The Jumbie Bird (1960)           3. The Trope of the Ricefield in Harold Sonny Ladoo's No pain like this body (1972)4. (En)Gendering Indenture in Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night (1992)Conclusion                                                                                                                             AcknowledgmentsBibliographyIndex

"Contradictory Indianness continues the urgent work of uncoupling Indo-Caribbean studies from glances backward at India and rightly identifies Indo-Caribbean literature as a radical and uniquely Caribbean project of challenging orthodoxies and forging belonging. In turning her attention to under-examined writers from the Indo-Caribbean canon, Phukan offers us both an astute explication of post-indentureship aesthetics and a more expansive understanding of how creolization plays out for Indo-Caribbean writers."— Lisa Outar, co-editor of Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought: Genealogies, Theories, Enactments"This is an alternative Caribbean literary history that expands the scope of narratives available for a reading of the Indo-Caribbean through the inclusion of a diverse set of new as well as well-established literary texts. It resituates the idea of the Indo-Caribbean as an analogue to Afro-Caribbean creolizing processes; through this, it also reimagines the connection to India in the making of the indenture stories in the Caribbean. It is deeply observant and wide-ranging in its exciting explorations."— Anjali Nerlekar, author of Bombay Modern: Arun Kolatkar and Bilingual Literary Culture

ATREYEE PHUKAN is an associate professor of English at the University of San Diego in California. She is the co-editor of South Asia and Its Others: Reading the Exotic, and co-editor of Home and the World: South Asia in Transition.

• Introduction: Indenture, Creolization, and Literary Imaginary1. Passage and Poetics in Totaram Sanadhya and LalBihari Sharma 2. Repatriation and the "Indian Problem" in Ismith Khan's The Jumbie Bird (1960)           3. The Trope of the Ricefield in Harold Sonny Ladoo's No pain like this body (1972)4. (En)Gendering Indenture in Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night (1992)Conclusion                                                                                                                             AcknowledgmentsBibliographyIndex

"Contradictory Indianness continues the urgent work of uncoupling Indo-Caribbean studies from glances backward at India and rightly identifies Indo-Caribbean literature as a radical and uniquely Caribbean project of challenging orthodoxies and forging belonging. In turning her attention to under-examined writers from the Indo-Caribbean canon, Phukan offers us both an astute explication of post-indentureship aesthetics and a more expansive understanding of how creolization plays out for Indo-Caribbean writers."— Lisa Outar, co-editor of Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought: Genealogies, Theories, Enactments"This is an alternative Caribbean literary history that expands the scope of narratives available for a reading of the Indo-Caribbean through the inclusion of a diverse set of new as well as well-established literary texts. It resituates the idea of the Indo-Caribbean as an analogue to Afro-Caribbean creolizing processes; through this, it also reimagines the connection to India in the making of the indenture stories in the Caribbean. It is deeply observant and wide-ranging in its exciting explorations."— Anjali Nerlekar, author of Bombay Modern: Arun Kolatkar and Bilingual Literary Culture