NEIL BISSOONDATH: Indo-Caribbean-Canadian Diaspora

Neil Bissoondath: Indo-Caribbean-Canadian Diaspora is the first full-length book on one of the prominent writers of today. Frank Birbalsingh, himself from the Indo-Caribbean diaspora and a pioneer in Caribbean studies, has worked through literary and family lineages, diasporic imaginaries and affiliations and located Bissoondath at the junction of his Caribbean roots, his Naipaulian association and the new non-hyphenated Canadianness Bissoondath seeks to embrace as he works from short stories to novels, from Caribbean themes to Canadian locations, and strives to construct a new sense of belonging.

The contextualisation in the Caribbean political and economic struggles lays bare the underlying animosities, the sense of community and the manifestation of ethnicities—all of which form a complex conflictual background to the fresh migrations and identity formations. Creolisation vs hybridity, sense of a new nationhood contrasted with the anguish of separation, the power struggles between powerful majorities and ‘recalcitrant’ minorities, the hospitality and the hostility of recipient societies which surface in Bissoondath’s work are analysed and elaborated upon in the context of his Caribbean heritage.

The work forms a significant contribution to the series primarily because it problematises the struggles of the third or fourth generations of emigrants, who are compelled to move again towards a fresh sense of dislocation and a fresh struggle for acceptance.