JWIL mourns the passing on January 14, 2024 of the Trinidadian-British writer, Lakshmi Persaud, one of the first and most influential writers to narrate the complex experiences of Indo-Caribbean women both in the region and in the diaspora. Born in 1939 in Tunapuna, Trinidad and having lived in the UK since the 1970s, Persaud was a teacher, a journalist, and author of five novels: Butterfly in the Wind (1990), Sastra (1993), For the Love of My Name (1999), Raise the Lanterns High (2004), and Daughters of Empire (2012). Persaud’s work is particularly notable for its exploration of how the constraints and possibilities of an orthodox Hindu upbringing paired with the multicultural Caribbean landscape unfold in the lives of girls and women as they navigate spaces of home, school, professional life, and diaspora. In Butterfly in the Wind and Sastra in particular, we find Persaud fleshing out the Hindu Indo-Caribbean world that V.S. Naipaul introduced in his early novels while providing greater agency and voice to women protagonists.

Jeremy Poynting of Peepal Tree Press was Persaud’s first publisher and urged her to think of herself as a novelist when she had yet to embrace that identity herself. His memories of her are available here. As Poynting notes, “Hers was an example of how to seize the time in the second half of her life with zest, hard work and an increasing sense of what the novel could achieve. She was 53 when Butterfly in the Wind was published and 75 when her last novel Daughters of Empire came out in 2012.” See here for Lisa Outar’s review of that last novel, Daughters of Empire, which traces the ruptures and continuities of the migrant experience for Indo-Caribbean women across different branches of a middle-class family.

Literary critics paid particular attention to Persaud’s evocative treatment of food in her novels. As Brinda Mehta argued, “Sastra and Butterfly in the Wind are illustrations of Hindu attitudes toward food as well as women’s efforts to contribute to community development through their control of the kitchen.” Persaud thus contributed to revealing some of the subtler and less celebrated forms that Indo-Caribbean feminist practices can take.

For Anita Baksh’s interview with Persaud, where she describes the influence that Naipaul had upon her, the value that she placed upon teaching, and her version of feminism among other topics, see here. And for an abundant list of reviews of Persaud’s work, see here.

We honor her memory and her important contribution to the field of Caribbean women’s writing.