Sugar, Sugar

Image description: Map of African continent, Indian subcontinent, South America, the Caribbean, island of Mauritius and islands of Fiji to show some of different places indentured labourers were taken to.

In this collection, Lainy Malkani shines a light on those “less travelled” stories and wonderfully weaves them together using ‘sugar’ as the connecting thread. Her tales encompass the wrench of being separated from one’s homeland, the dreams of return, and a desperation to escape- through to the nostalgia, acknowledgement and tribulations of having such a past in one’s family. Set in tropical lands that today many regard as exotic paradises, Lainy’s stories convey the [painful] emotional hues, the horror and complexities that so many [people] faced - but also the importance of connection, belonging and kinship. Sugar may never taste quite the same.

-Excerpt from Sugar, Sugar by Lainy Malkani