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ALL Book Reviews The New York Times Book Review

A Passage From India

In 1883, the British government sent the accomplished linguist Sir George Grierson to look into alleged abuses in the recruitment of indentured servants from India (known as “coolies”) who ended up on ships bound for British plantations throughout the world. In his diary, Grierson wrote about an encounter with the father of one female coolie in a village along the Ganges, noting that the man “denied having any such relative, and probably she had gone wrong and been disowned by him.” The historical record provides only a trace of this woman: a name, a processing number, a year of emigration.

In his ambitious new novel, “Sea of Poppies,” a finalist for this year’s Man Booker Prize, Amitav Ghosh attempts to fill in the blanks left by the archives. Continue reading
my review of the book in The New York Times.

sea of poppies

Categories
ALL Articles Foreign Coverage Migration Ms. Magazine

Survival Sex

Sajida can’t talk openly about what war and displacement have forced her to do. She banters with male customers at the cafe where she works in Damascus, Syria. But the men want more from this 43-year old divorced mother of two, a refugee from Iraq. And she can’t refuse; her boss has seized her passport. “I am a slave in his hands,” Sajida says.

Continue reading my piece about Sajida and other Iraqi refugees forced into prostitution in Syria in Ms. Magazine’s Summer 2008 issue.

You can also listen to an interview about the article at 9 minutes past the hour on Doug Clifford’s Hour of Hope.

Categories
Articles Migration The Philadelphia Inquirer

Seeking U.S. Asylum, She Finds 3 Years in Jail

Takky Zubeda’s Story
By Gaiutra Bahadur
The Philadelphia Inquirer

Categories
ALL Book Reviews Ms. Magazine

An East-West Affair

Madras on Rainy Days by Samina Ali
Review by Gaiutra Bahadur
Ms. Magazine, Winter 2003/2004