KINGSTON, RI – Oct. 16, 2024 – Rutgers University Press hosted URI professor Dr. Preity Kumar for the release of her book An Ordinary Landscape of Violence: Women Loving Women in Guyana on Sept. 26. Kumar’s book questions the understanding of violence in everyday context through the stories of LGBT women in Guyana.

The press conference was sponsored by the Mellon foundation, URI’s grant association. Ann Cvetkovich, a leading scholar in affect theory, was brought as a guest speaker, reflecting on Kumar’s work. 

“To have her be in conversation with me was a huge honor,” Kumar said. “I had read her work as a graduate student and to be in conversation with her now is a dream of mine.”

Additionally, the Mellon grant was able to provide 25-30 free copies of An Ordinary Landscape of Violence which was donated to students and faculty present at the event. Copies will be to be donated to the women’s center, the library and the Gender and Sexuality center.

“It really takes a community to put on these events because you have to do a lot of back work. I’m very grateful that it was a success,” Kumar said.

Kumar began her research in 2015, spending 6 months in Guyana interviewing women loving women through a feminist method known as ‘snowballing’. This is the act of one person putting you into contact with another, building an informal network like a snowball builds onto itself.

“At the time of doing this research, a lot of the women weren’t attending lgbt organizations or doing activism,” Kumar said. “The local organization in Georgetown, the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SACOD), tries to bring in local queer people, but a lot of the women I interviewed didn’t go to those spaces.” 

Growing up as an Indo-Guyanese queer woman in Canada, Kumar became immersed in Caribbean and American feminist works, sparking her interest in her own history and identity. Scholars such as Jackie Alexander, Patricia Mohammed, Rhoda Reddock, Lisa Outar, Gloria Wekker, and Gabriellae Hosein, became key figures in her life.

“I realized there is a body of scholarship in the Caribbean that does work for people who look like me and feel like me and think like me,” Kumar said. “That kind of curiosity kind of lit a flame and I couldn’t go back.”

As a gender and women’s studies professor, Kumar’s research focuses on women loving other women, violence, and questions surrounding identity and community making. Aside from An Ordinary Landscape of Violence, Kumar has published previous articles discussing the understanding of gender in Guyana.

An Ordinary Landscape of Violence follows the experiences of different LGBT Guyanese women surrounding violence and how their identities are affected in the midst of it. Kumar’s research is expansive in her field, however the work done for this particular project had a personal edge; an experience she only learned about after living in Guyana that changed everything. 

Two days after Kumar left Guyana, the local police carried out a search warrant saying they found a woman buried underneath Kumar’s balcony. “A woman who was murdered and killed by her husband and was buried under my apartment where I was living in Georgetown, Guyana,” Kumar said. “She was buried there, and I was out doing my interviews with women loving women, all the while not knowing what was happening.”

Living with this kind of violence drastically shifted Kumar’s work and the way she viewed violence. She began focusing on violence outside of the contexts of riots and war. She arrived at the idea of “ordinary violence,” the violence that affects people’s everyday lives and that they become accustomed to everyday. 

“That’s how this project came into fruition, thinking about the different layers of violence that queer women experience now and how it is ordinary,” Kumar said. “It’s so ordinary that we cannot even think of it, because it’s just a normal part of life.”

Through interviews with lgbt Guyanese women, Kumar was presented with violent experiences with the state structures and government officials. Homophobic and transphobic words or actions are often seen being dismissed due to religious affiliations or ignorance. However, victims are left to internalize these actions. 

“They actually come to feel like… ‘I feel like I do not deserve to live because this is what I hear all the priests telling me about myself,’” Kumar said. “And that has led into suicidal ideation and suicidal attempts. So I attempt to show how these narratives of disgust, fear, suspicion live with these women. They come to think of themselves like that and it’s very sad and tragic, but it has material consequences on their life.”

Many same-sex couples also shared their encounters with abuse or other psychological control in their relationships. Due to homophobic and transphobic laws and stigmas in Guyana, many women remain silent through these hardships out of fear of further exploitation. Kumar explains how society assumes that, because a relationship is between two women, there will be more gender equality. 

“The queer community on a more mainstream level is still fighting for a lot of political rights. They’re still fighting for a lot of civil rights in society,” Kumar said. “For them to even talk about the violence within their own relationship would further negate them from accessing those rights.”

While Kumar’s research focuses on these everyday acts of violence, it is important to note that this is not the reality for the entire lgbt Guyanese community. However, by shifting the conversation into how people think about violence to begin with, better solutions for ending violence can be found.

While the fight for the rights of the lgbt community continues in Guyana, there are many women who are trying to stay hidden because of the fear and risk of losing their businesses and reputations because of their queer identities. Becoming vocal about one’s queer identity is often seen as provocative and sexually scandalous in the global south. 

Kumar will be traveling back to Guyana this year for a book talk at the University of Guyana along with a talk with SACOD. 

“I think the trip will determine a lot of things for me, how I want to pursue my research academically but also how I feel emotionally in that space, how the space has changed, and what I see contributing to Guyana moving forward,” Kumar said. “I think this trip will answer a lot of questions for me.”

To purchase a copy of Dr. Preity Kumar’s An Ordinary Landscape of Violence: Women Loving Women in Guyana, visit Rutgers University Press

 

This event review was written by Erin Malinn, class of 2028.