Dr. Lomarsh Roopnarine wins the Gordon K & Sybil Lewis Award

Guyanese Dr. Lomarsh Roopnarine is professor of Caribbean and Latin American history at Jackson State University and has he has written articles in many regional and international journals that focus on the Caribbean and Latin America. His recent book, Indian Caribbean: Migration and Identity in the diaspora has landed him the Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis award.
According to the Caribbean Studies Association, the Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Award was established to honor the memory of distinguished Caribbeanists Gordon K. Lewis and Sybil Lewis. It is granted to the best book about the Caribbean published over the previous three-year period in Spanish, English, French or Dutch. The nominated book should approach the chosen subject or aspect of Caribbean life conditions and situations from an interdisciplinary perspective, and should clearly show to have regional impact.
Dr. Roopnarine’s field of study is interdisciplinary, drawing on methods and concepts in history, sociology, economics and environmental science to understand labor migration, resistance, human rights, identity as well as environment policy challenges in the Caribbean. For the past fifteen years, his research has focused on the movement of Asian contract/peasant workers to the Caribbean and their plantation experience with regard to their adaptation to structural dominance.
Additionally, his research examines social identity of and among East Indian, African and Hispanic Caribbean ethnic groups and is particularly interested in exploring alternative ways in analyzing social identity in the Caribbean. Dr. Roopnarine believes that identity is negotiated and shaped by geography, history, political leadership, migration and globalization which is not totally physical or permanent but also imaginative, incorporating issues of ethnicity, resistance, human rights, among other factors.
The former Guyana Times columnist’s book, Indian Caribbean: Migration and Identity, tells a distinct story of Indians in the Caribbean–one concentrated not only on archival records and institutions, but also on the voices of the people and the ways in which they define themselves and the world around them. Through oral history and ethnography, Dr. Roopnarine explores previously marginalized Indians in the Caribbean and their distinct social dynamics and histories, including the French Caribbean and other islands with smaller South Asian populations.
He pursues a comparative approach with inclusive themes that cut across the Caribbean.
In 1833, the abolition of slavery in the British Empire led to the import of exploited South Asian indentured workers in the Caribbean. Today India bears little relevance to most of these Caribbean Indians. Yet, Caribbean Indians have developed an in-between status, shaped by South Asian customs such as religion, music, folklore, migration, new identities, and Bollywood films.
They do not seem akin to Indians in India, nor are they like Caribbean Creoles, or mixed-race Caribbeans. Instead, they have merged India and the Caribbean to produce a distinct, dynamic local entity.
The book does not neglect the arrival of non-indentured Indians in the Caribbean since the early 1900s. These people came to the Caribbean without an indentured contract or after indentured emancipation but have formed significant communities in Barbados, the US Virgin Islands, and Jamaica. Drawing upon over twenty-five years of research in the Caribbean and North America, Dr. Roopnarine contributes a thorough analysis of the Indo-Caribbean, among the first to look at the entire Indian diaspora across the Caribbean.
The book also addresses the under-researched theme of Indian migration and identity formation in the Caribbean. The reason for this declaration is that Caribbean migration studies tend to focus on the larger and more visible ethnic groups, as well as on a few specific islands.
The result is that we know very little of Indian migration since settlement in the Caribbean, and how this migration has shaped Indian identity.
We also know very little of the challenges Indians face in order to migrate their respective communities, and their migratory experience in their new environment.