Dr. Nikoli Attai is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Race, Gender, and Ethnic Studies at Colorado State University. He is the author of
Defiant Bodies, Making Queer Community in the Anglophone Caribbean (Rutgers University Press, 2023), which examines the experiences of queer and trans people in Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago. Dr. Attai works closely with CAISO: Sex and Gender Justice in Trinidad and Tobago and will launch The Queer Archives of Trinidad and Tobago in collaboration with community members on October 26th, 2024.
Babita, Anna, Jackie,
Julie, Sandra, Lisa,
Anna, Veronica, Mina,
Tina, Kelly, Rebecca,
Amelia, Sonia, Diana… The list goes on.
These names represent women whose experiences will resonate deeply with us. We might even see reflections of our own lives in their stories as we navigate the contours of violence documented in Dr. Preity Kumar’s insightful book, An Ordinary Landscape of Violence: Women Loving Women in Guyana. Recently published by Rutgers University Press, Kumar examines the various forms of violence that women-loving women confront daily across urban and rural communities in Georgetown and Berbice.
Kumar skillfully illustrates how societal, familial, and religious expectations shape the experiences of all women across race, class, gender, sexuality, and geographic location. She highlights the pervasive violence that often accompanies the relationships these women form with others with whom they share physical, emotional, psychological, and sexual connections. The analysis is grounded in the concept of “ordinary violence,” exploring how individuals navigate state structures while negotiating and absorbing the residual effects of violence. Her work goes beyond merely documenting physical violence but also delves into its psychological toll on groups of women-loving women in Guyana.
In five analytical and reflective chapters, Kumar addresses various moments where violence manifests in these women’s lives. She does not shy away from describing the impact of violence and emphasizes the urgent need to address it. The book opens by establishing how Guyana’s racially and politically charged environment creates a fertile ground for fear, distrust, and suspicion among people and between the state and citizens. This atmosphere profoundly shapes intimate relationships as the women in her study learn to navigate this landscape. Kumar then provides a rich historical context to demonstrate how fear and shame produced through religious discourses are intricately linked to the legacies of chattel enslavement and indentureship. These legacies serve to police gender and sexual expression while controlling how women-loving women perceive themselves as sexual, spiritual, and social beings.
Existing scholarship on queer experiences in the Caribbean has largely focused on urban settings and predominantly on gay men and trans women. However, Kumar’s attention to her hometown in Berbice offers a refreshing perspective on an under-studied demographic in Guyana. In Berbice, she investigates the spaces that influence women’s ability to embrace their queer desires fully. These include family structures that uphold notions of respectability within a patriarchal framework. Societal expectations surrounding marriage, motherhood, and domesticity often prove unattainable for working-class women – especially working-class queer women – who face precarious circumstances that hinder them from embodying acceptable feminine traits dictated by patriarchal norms. This work makes a timely contribution to a growing body of scholarship that centers on lesbian and woman-loving women communities in the Caribbean. It challenges readers to confront uncomfortable truths about love and violence while inspiring hope for a future where all individuals can embrace their desires without fear or shame.
Kumar’s work nuances and expands the discourse on queer Caribbean experiences by considering how the women she engages sometimes replicate the very oppressive structures they navigate and desire to escape. The women-loving women in her study also fall victim to intimate partner violence fueled by jealousy – a phenomenon with deep historical roots in the Caribbean culture, where jealousy is often intertwined with love. Historical and contemporary data reveal that many continue to view various acts of violence – whether policing women’s behaviour, engaging in stalking, or abuse – as justifiable or natural. Public spaces like rum shops, clubs, and hotels, as well as more private spaces such as cars and homes, frequently serve as sites where individuals experience or perpetrate such violence, and Kumar’s research illustrates how these environments contribute to a culture where violence is normalized.
The book concludes on a sobering note as Kumar offers the concept of still life to suggest “a momentary pause, a quietness, a temporary slowing down of space, place, and time to witness life as it unfolds.” She invites readers to sit with her and the woman-loving women she interviewed to carefully contemplate how violence often leads to profound emotional struggles, manifesting as suicidal ideation, self-harm, or depression. This issue is not new to Guyana, which has been labeled the “suicide capital” of the world by organizations like the World Health Organization due to alarmingly high rates among individuals aged 15 to 50. Such slowing of pace is a necessary way for readers to stand face to face with the traumatizing evidence that Kumar also confronts while analyzing the data she presents. But engaging with this work will be cathartic in many ways, even if it requires you to reflect on your own relationship to the contours of violence that structure our lives in the Caribbean.
There are no quick fixes to address violence and the issues Kumar interrogates. In fact, she candidly states that “this book is no utopia; thus, we must find new and creative ways to negotiate violence and simultaneously imagine a different life, even if it is a life paved with injuries.” However, readers begin to find hopeful remedies in the stories of defiant resilience. These women also find ways to nurture love in their communities through informal gatherings, cookouts, or building their own families. They are carving out ways of living in Guyana that offer us lessons of hope and inspiration for a better life outside the confines of violence. In this context of relentless violence, then, both Kumar’s spirit and those of her participants endure.
Dr. Preity Kumar will be launching her first book, “An Ordinary Landscape of Violence: Women Loving Women in Guyana,” this week in Georgetown. The event is hosted by Sexualities, Women, and Genders (SWAG), Red Thread, SASOD Guyana, and the Institute for Gender Studies at the University of Guyana and will feature an introduction by Dr. Nikoli Attai. This launch is open to the public and will take place on Thursday, October 17th, from 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM at Moray House on Camp and Quamina Streets in Georgetown.