Aleah N. Ranjitsingh – författare

Identity is often fraught for multiracial Douglas, people of both South Asian and African descent in the Caribbean. In this groundbreaking volume, Sue Ann Barratt and Aleah N. Ranjitsingh explore the particular meanings of a Dougla identity and examine Dougla maneuverability both at home and in the diaspora. The authors scrutinize the perception of Douglaness over time, contemporary Douglas negotiations of social demands, their expansion of ethnicity as an intersectional identity, and the experiences of Douglas within the diaspora outside the Caribbean. Through an examination of how Douglas experience their claim to multiracialism and how ethnic identity may be enforced or interrupted, the authors firmly situate this analysis in ongoing debates about multiracial identity.Based on interviews with over one hundred Douglas, Barratt and Ranjitsingh explore the multiple subjectivities Douglas express, confirm, challenge, negotiate, and add to prevailing understandings. Contemplating this, Dougla in the Twenty-First Century adds to the global discourse of multiethnic identity and how it impacts living both in the Caribbean, where it is easily recognizable, and in the diaspora, where the Dougla remains a largely unacknowledged designation. This book deliberately expands the conversation beyond the limits of biraciality and the Black/white binary and contributes nuance to current interpretations of the lives of multiracial people by introducing Douglas as they carve out their lives in the Caribbean.

Identity is often fraught for multiracial Douglas, people of both South Asian and African descent in the Caribbean. In this groundbreaking volume, Sue Ann Barratt and Aleah N. Ranjitsingh explore the particular meanings of a Dougla identity and examine Dougla maneuverability both at home and in the diaspora. The authors scrutinize the perception of Douglaness over time, contemporary Douglas negotiations of social demands, their expansion of ethnicity as an intersectional identity, and the experiences of Douglas within the diaspora outside the Caribbean. Through an examination of how Douglas experience their claim to multiracialism and how ethnic identity may be enforced or interrupted, the authors firmly situate this analysis in ongoing debates about multiracial identity.Based on interviews with over one hundred Douglas, Barratt and Ranjitsingh explore the multiple subjectivities Douglas express, confirm, challenge, negotiate, and add to prevailing understandings. Contemplating this, Dougla in the Twenty-First Century adds to the global discourse of multiethnic identity and how it impacts living both in the Caribbean, where it is easily recognizable, and in the diaspora, where the Dougla remains a largely unacknowledged designation. This book deliberately expands the conversation beyond the limits of biraciality and the Black/white binary and contributes nuance to current interpretations of the lives of multiracial people by introducing Douglas as they carve out their lives in the Caribbean.

This book expands notions of the Caribbean diaspora, which is often cast in very specific ways, so as to account for the Asian as part of the Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora. It seeks to be descriptive, while also countering a limited discourse on the Caribbean diaspora.The Asian Caribbean in the Caribbean Diaspora is grounded in the very histories and legacies of indentureship, contract labor, later migrations to the region, and encounter. The Asian presence has long been felt in the greater Caribbean – the result of colonial powers which necessitated labor on Caribbean plantations against the backdrop of empire and burgeoning capitalist structures; and later migrations as "free" migrants compelled by emigration schemes and economic opportunity. This work is descriptive, while also countering a limited discourse on the Caribbean diaspora. Its collection of interdisciplinary chapters which center the Chinese, Indian, Japanese and Javanese in and outside of the Caribbean, reveal migration narratives, encounters on Caribbean plantations and in diasporic urban centers, notions of homeland and experiences of return, family histories, identity formation and subjectivity, the ways in which Caribbean people create and convey meaning about these histories, experiences and self, and the contributions of Caribbean people of Asian descent to the framing of the Caribbean and Asian diasporas.