Coolie Woman Quotes

“But the religious texts do describe—some have said, prescribe—the disfigurement of women who transgress sexually.23”
― Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture

“Throughout the archives, repeatedly they face the classic insinuation against victims of sexual assault. The”
― Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture

“as devadasis (prostitutes dedicated to temples or, literally, “servants of god”)”
― Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture

“Is it possible that my great-grandmother would not want me to know why and how she left?”
― Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture

“the woman who willingly shepherded her children into the wooded dark to meet strange men but then blamed it all on a procuress?”
― Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture

“Either the woman was incredibly malleable and naive—or she may have been open to enticement, no matter what she told the authorities. Hers is a story divided against itself. And”
― Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture

“managers in Vrindaban were often sexually abused and exploited.20”
― Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture

“The faithful read the gopis’ ecstatic and erotic love for Krishna as an allegory for the soul’s longing for God, a pining sweet with the anguish of the unattainable.14”
― Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture

“Some people does really tek yuh shadow.”
― Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture

“Everywhere around us, they spoke in a dialect so private, so intimate to my ears, that every time they opened their mouths, there was a tingling fusion of inside and out, an electric union of outside and in, a sparks-flying soldering together of they soul”
― Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture