I Even Regret Night: Verses from Indenture

UPDATE: Please note the new location. This program will now take place at the NYU King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center located at 53 Washington Square South.

Presented by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU. Co-sponsored by the NYU Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, South Asian American Digital Archive, Rajkumari Cultural Center, Jahajee Sisters, Guyana Modern.com, and Asian American Writers’ Workshop.

While conducting research for her book Coolie Woman, Gaiutra Bahadur (Visiting Scholar, A/P/A Institute at NYU) came across Lalbihari Sharma’s Holi Songs of Demerara, the only known literary work written by an indentured laborer in the Anglophone Caribbean. She passed the songbook, written in a combination of Awadhi, Bhojpuri, and Braj Bhasha, to award-winning Indo-Caribbean poet and translator Rajiv Mohabir, and a literary recovery project was born. Join us for a reading from I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara (Kaya Press, 2018), which chronicles the “interior lives of indentured men” (Bahadur) on the sugar plantations of British Guiana. Bahadur, who wrote the book’s afterword, and Mohabir, who completed its translation, will be in conversation with Grace Aneiza Ali (NYU Department of Art & Public Policy). Audience members are invited to record their own family histories of indenture and migration with the South Asian American Digital Archive.

This venue is on the first floor. Restrooms are not all gender, and are accessible via elevator. If you need any accommodations, please email apa.rsvp@nyu.edu at least two weeks before the event date.

Photo of Gaiutra Bahadur (far right) by Joanna Eldredge Morrissey.