ANTIMAN

An Indo-Guyanese queer poet recounts how he came to embrace his Hindu heritage and artistic leanings through his Guyanese grandmother.

The London-born child of Guyanese immigrants to Florida, Mohabir was the only one in his Christianized family to take an interest in their “Coolie Hindoo” past and Aji, the paternal grandmother who represented it. The author’s father insisted that the family “leave behind the backward ways” of colonial Guyana to travel to the U.S. But Mohabir was so intrigued by the languages Aji spoke (Guyanese Bhojpuri and Creole) and her songs that he began studying Hindi as a teenager and translating and transcribing his grandmother’s words. Later, he went to Varanasi to find the origins of Aji’s songs and study her language. His difference from his family not only manifested in his desire to recuperate a reviled past, but also in the life he led apart from his parents as an “antiman” (homosexual). Wanting to experience life more fully as a queer man, Mohabir went to New York via teaching fellowship and became more engaged in progressive politics and social justice issues. The author also engaged in relationships with other South Asian men, and, through a fellow activist who wrote poetry, he discovered what Aji’s songs had already instilled in him: a love of the written word. Then a cousin outed Mohabir to his parents, and he came face to face with one of his deepest fears: losing his family for being an antiman, who were deemed “laughable” and “unworthy of support.” After Aji died, relatives told him that she had loved and praised him for learning family traditions. Interwoven with Bhojpuri and Creole renderings of Aji’s songs and stories as well as Mohabir’s own interesting poetry, this distinctive memoir explores the complex, at times heartbreaking, intersection of identities and the tumultuous process of becoming an artist.

A shattering and heartfelt journey from heartache and hesitancy to confidence, self-acceptance, and joy.