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Antiman: A Hybrid Memoir
Winner of the 2019 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing
Finalist for the 2022 PEN Open Book Award
Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Rajiv Mohabir’s Antiman is an impassioned, genre-blending memoir that navigates the fraught constellations of race, sexuality, and cultural heritage that have shaped his experiences as an Indo-Guyanese queer poet and immigrant to the United States.
Growing up a Guyanese Indian immigrant in Central Florida, Rajiv Mohabir is fascinated by his family’s abandoned Hindu history and the legacy of his ancestors, who were indentured laborers on British sugarcane plantations. In Toronto he sits at the feet of Aji, his grandmother, listening to her stories and songs in her Caribbean Bhojpuri. By now Aji’s eleven children have immigrated to North America and busied themselves with ascension, Christianity, and the erasure of their heritage and Caribbean accents. But Rajiv wants to know more: where did he come from, and why does he feel so out of place?
Embarking on a journey of discovery, he lives for a year in Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges, perfecting his Hindi and Bhojpuri and tracing the lineage of his Aji’s music. Returning to Florida, the cognitive dissonance of confederate flags, Islamophobia, and his father’s disapproval sends him to New York, where finds community among like-minded brown activists, work as an ESL teacher, and intoxication in the queer nightlife scene. But even in the South Asian paradise of Jackson Heights, Rajiv feels like an outsider: “Coolie” rather than Desi. And then the final hammer of estrangement falls when his cousin outs him as an “antiman”—a Caribbean slur for men who love men—and his father and aunts disown him.
But Aji has taught Rajiv resilience. Emerging from the chrysalis of his ancestral poetics into a new life, he embraces his identity as a poet and reclaims his status as an antiman—forging a new way of being entirely his own. Rapturous, inventive, and devastating in its critique of our own failures of inclusion, Antiman is a hybrid memoir that helps us see ourselves and relationships anew, and announces an exciting new talent in Rajiv Mohabir.
Finalist for the 2022 PEN Open Book Award
Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Rajiv Mohabir’s Antiman is an impassioned, genre-blending memoir that navigates the fraught constellations of race, sexuality, and cultural heritage that have shaped his experiences as an Indo-Guyanese queer poet and immigrant to the United States.
Growing up a Guyanese Indian immigrant in Central Florida, Rajiv Mohabir is fascinated by his family’s abandoned Hindu history and the legacy of his ancestors, who were indentured laborers on British sugarcane plantations. In Toronto he sits at the feet of Aji, his grandmother, listening to her stories and songs in her Caribbean Bhojpuri. By now Aji’s eleven children have immigrated to North America and busied themselves with ascension, Christianity, and the erasure of their heritage and Caribbean accents. But Rajiv wants to know more: where did he come from, and why does he feel so out of place?
Embarking on a journey of discovery, he lives for a year in Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges, perfecting his Hindi and Bhojpuri and tracing the lineage of his Aji’s music. Returning to Florida, the cognitive dissonance of confederate flags, Islamophobia, and his father’s disapproval sends him to New York, where finds community among like-minded brown activists, work as an ESL teacher, and intoxication in the queer nightlife scene. But even in the South Asian paradise of Jackson Heights, Rajiv feels like an outsider: “Coolie” rather than Desi. And then the final hammer of estrangement falls when his cousin outs him as an “antiman”—a Caribbean slur for men who love men—and his father and aunts disown him.
But Aji has taught Rajiv resilience. Emerging from the chrysalis of his ancestral poetics into a new life, he embraces his identity as a poet and reclaims his status as an antiman—forging a new way of being entirely his own. Rapturous, inventive, and devastating in its critique of our own failures of inclusion, Antiman is a hybrid memoir that helps us see ourselves and relationships anew, and announces an exciting new talent in Rajiv Mohabir.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published June 22, 2021
46 people are currently reading
1569 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
July 12, 2022
Rating: 5* of five, or maybe even six....
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: If you read one sentence from this review, make it this one:
That's as perfect a description of the reason writers write, creators of anything create, as I can imagine there being.
Now. Remember who this is, talking to you: An avowed anti-poetry zealot. This is a person, the one writing this review, who reads poetry with a pained grimace (if required to in public) or not at all (if it can possibly be avoided).
You, my fellow Western people, need to read this poet's poetry of love and passion and the terror of not knowing what life is, what Life is we understand, but life? Why is there life? And what you will learn is that everyone fears death and hates loneliness and eagerly whores their body out for a brief look-in from connectedness to another.
It's all down to Ajiya, the author's grandmother, you see. Without her strength of will and flowering of soul, your author would not have come to be or learned to be. She powered his being, his existence in this Vale of Tears, with a dirty veil of Life cast aside at last so she could finally, finally! be where she belonged all along, with her grandson, her boy of the heart.
Inside, then, all of us. Everyone who reads this book. Everyone who has read the poems she gave to her grandson who turned them into words they weren't forged from and thus pounded a new meaning from the gold, the silver, the lead. We all have Rajiv Mohabir's Ajiya in us and we're lucky we do. It's a simple truth that our belovèd others are not always what we would've wished them to be. Immigrants are required to make themselves anew and Ajiya wasn't made of malleable stuff so she didn't. Instead she waited, quiet as she could make herself, until the ears she had got in exchange for the mouth she turned off showed up again.
So it is that her outsider Other grandson became the channel of her frequency and spoke its truth and its stories and its poems into our indifference-clouded intoxicated-with-vanity white/Western/privileged ears. His soul and hers...two for one...and you'll just have to pay for a single book. It's an amazing reading experience, with its Creole passages and its polyphonic choruses of lifestuff. Its ebullience carries you through the passages where cruel, small people following a character from a bad fantasy novel reject and belittle when they can be induced to notice anyone not like themselves.
That attitude is a specialist product, turned out by the megaton, of the US and its more revolting useless eaters.
There is absolutely a need for all y'all to come to this table, to sit down with all your long-lost spiritkin, and learn the songs and the poems of their walk through our world. Yours has shadows, but their light might help dispel those that frighten you the way night terrors and sleep paralysis...the states between states that humans do not want to inhabit...release you when they are rolled away.
I wait for years for reads like this to come along.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: If you read one sentence from this review, make it this one:
I'd never thought of writing as a gift, but a skill and a bravery that you have after refusing to burn up in flame. It was an act against death.
That's as perfect a description of the reason writers write, creators of anything create, as I can imagine there being.
Now. Remember who this is, talking to you: An avowed anti-poetry zealot. This is a person, the one writing this review, who reads poetry with a pained grimace (if required to in public) or not at all (if it can possibly be avoided).
You, my fellow Western people, need to read this poet's poetry of love and passion and the terror of not knowing what life is, what Life is we understand, but life? Why is there life? And what you will learn is that everyone fears death and hates loneliness and eagerly whores their body out for a brief look-in from connectedness to another.
It's all down to Ajiya, the author's grandmother, you see. Without her strength of will and flowering of soul, your author would not have come to be or learned to be. She powered his being, his existence in this Vale of Tears, with a dirty veil of Life cast aside at last so she could finally, finally! be where she belonged all along, with her grandson, her boy of the heart.
Inside, then, all of us. Everyone who reads this book. Everyone who has read the poems she gave to her grandson who turned them into words they weren't forged from and thus pounded a new meaning from the gold, the silver, the lead. We all have Rajiv Mohabir's Ajiya in us and we're lucky we do. It's a simple truth that our belovèd others are not always what we would've wished them to be. Immigrants are required to make themselves anew and Ajiya wasn't made of malleable stuff so she didn't. Instead she waited, quiet as she could make herself, until the ears she had got in exchange for the mouth she turned off showed up again.
So it is that her outsider Other grandson became the channel of her frequency and spoke its truth and its stories and its poems into our indifference-clouded intoxicated-with-vanity white/Western/privileged ears. His soul and hers...two for one...and you'll just have to pay for a single book. It's an amazing reading experience, with its Creole passages and its polyphonic choruses of lifestuff. Its ebullience carries you through the passages where cruel, small people following a character from a bad fantasy novel reject and belittle when they can be induced to notice anyone not like themselves.
That attitude is a specialist product, turned out by the megaton, of the US and its more revolting useless eaters.
There is absolutely a need for all y'all to come to this table, to sit down with all your long-lost spiritkin, and learn the songs and the poems of their walk through our world. Yours has shadows, but their light might help dispel those that frighten you the way night terrors and sleep paralysis...the states between states that humans do not want to inhabit...release you when they are rolled away.
I wait for years for reads like this to come along.
August 5, 2021
Inventive and immersive writing that tells the story of our author in such a beautiful way you guys. The formatting spans from poetry to prose, and I really loved it. We center on Rajiv, a queer Guyanese Indian man who struggles with his attempts to connect to his roots in India and to his family, as they discover his sexuality.
This memoir is flowered with poems that are well appreciated after learning about the corresponding chapters of Rajiv’s life. Including poems and songs adds so much to the story, since his first attempts at discovering his origins began with the songs that his Aji (grandmother) would sing to him in her dying tongue. I felt the power of family relations in this book, and related to how damaging they can be when your loved ones don’t accept you for who you are.
I thought it was wonderful! I recommend.
This memoir is flowered with poems that are well appreciated after learning about the corresponding chapters of Rajiv’s life. Including poems and songs adds so much to the story, since his first attempts at discovering his origins began with the songs that his Aji (grandmother) would sing to him in her dying tongue. I felt the power of family relations in this book, and related to how damaging they can be when your loved ones don’t accept you for who you are.
I thought it was wonderful! I recommend.
August 1, 2021
Following on from his Kundiman prize-winning collection, The Cowherd's Son, Rajiv Mohabir's new book continues in its lyrical exploration of identity. Before I had even started reading, I noticed that the author describes it as a "hybrid memoir" on the cover of the book. Immediately, Antiman had offered some form of curiosity to me, spurring me on to take a dip in its depths.
Mohabir's memoir advances this escalating tradition of hybridity - these books that explores the fraught and fragmented relationship between inheritance and self, that seamlessly dissolve the borders between the "I" and the world, and that operate somewhere between one's memory and their ancestral history to retrace repressed lineage.
These memories flit between Guyana, Toronto, Florida and then India, as Mohabir journeys back to Varanasi in search of his roots. He draws from sources as various as Hindu mythology, his Aji's folksongs and Caribbean Creole to evoke the complex multiplicity of his identity.
Languages are a means of self expression, of conjuring an existence, and of defining who one becomes. Here, this is in my opinion, the center of Mohabir's concern. This notion of language; what connects us to where we are and what we call home. The opening epigraph from Sant Kabir Das, the great mystic poet from Kashi, sets the tone. As we are ushered into the poet's personal history, Creole, Guyanese Bhojpuri and Hindi spill over onto the pages. And as I read on, what stays, perhaps, the most, is this quote:
"Aji was anakshar. Unlettered. Anpardh. Not illiterate. In two languages. Each of her songs, a poem - a small devastation. Each of her stories, a fire to scorch my heart's forest; a door that when opened led to magic."
Antiman reveals the deftness of a skilled poet who renovates the exhausted narratives of migration, heritage, and history.
Thank you Restless Books for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest opinion.
Mohabir's memoir advances this escalating tradition of hybridity - these books that explores the fraught and fragmented relationship between inheritance and self, that seamlessly dissolve the borders between the "I" and the world, and that operate somewhere between one's memory and their ancestral history to retrace repressed lineage.
These memories flit between Guyana, Toronto, Florida and then India, as Mohabir journeys back to Varanasi in search of his roots. He draws from sources as various as Hindu mythology, his Aji's folksongs and Caribbean Creole to evoke the complex multiplicity of his identity.
Languages are a means of self expression, of conjuring an existence, and of defining who one becomes. Here, this is in my opinion, the center of Mohabir's concern. This notion of language; what connects us to where we are and what we call home. The opening epigraph from Sant Kabir Das, the great mystic poet from Kashi, sets the tone. As we are ushered into the poet's personal history, Creole, Guyanese Bhojpuri and Hindi spill over onto the pages. And as I read on, what stays, perhaps, the most, is this quote:
"Aji was anakshar. Unlettered. Anpardh. Not illiterate. In two languages. Each of her songs, a poem - a small devastation. Each of her stories, a fire to scorch my heart's forest; a door that when opened led to magic."
Antiman reveals the deftness of a skilled poet who renovates the exhausted narratives of migration, heritage, and history.
Thank you Restless Books for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest opinion.
June 30, 2021
Rajiv Mohabir's Antiman is a memoir-meets-poem about growing up ethnically varied in a world that that demands ethnic monogamy and heterosexuality.
Rajiv's, aka Raimie, family ancestry stretches back to India from where they emigrated to Guyana as indentured servants to the British colonialists. In Guyana their Hindi mixed with the local language to become Guyana Creole. For Rajiv, his life's mission becomes attempting to understand his history through the songs and stories of his Aji (grandmother) as he begins to realize that he is different, he is gay - an "antiman." Rajiv becomes estranged from his family - who have all converted to Lutheranism from Hinduism - who are ashamed to have an antiman in the family. What conspires is the tale of a queer person who because of his insecurities falls into the hands of abuse and rejection, but also finds freedom through rediscovering his past and discovering a future with queer chosen family.
Mohabir is an incredible story teller and his poetry is bar none, but, throughout, this memoir suffers from the same weakness of so many other memoirs: it tells where it should show, it dictates rather than painting a picture. Antiman is a compelling story that is bogged down by taking the form of a memoir. What is a good book could have been better as an autobiographical novel instead of a memoir but alas it is still a book worth reading.
Rajiv's, aka Raimie, family ancestry stretches back to India from where they emigrated to Guyana as indentured servants to the British colonialists. In Guyana their Hindi mixed with the local language to become Guyana Creole. For Rajiv, his life's mission becomes attempting to understand his history through the songs and stories of his Aji (grandmother) as he begins to realize that he is different, he is gay - an "antiman." Rajiv becomes estranged from his family - who have all converted to Lutheranism from Hinduism - who are ashamed to have an antiman in the family. What conspires is the tale of a queer person who because of his insecurities falls into the hands of abuse and rejection, but also finds freedom through rediscovering his past and discovering a future with queer chosen family.
Mohabir is an incredible story teller and his poetry is bar none, but, throughout, this memoir suffers from the same weakness of so many other memoirs: it tells where it should show, it dictates rather than painting a picture. Antiman is a compelling story that is bogged down by taking the form of a memoir. What is a good book could have been better as an autobiographical novel instead of a memoir but alas it is still a book worth reading.
September 18, 2021
All of Mohabir’s virtuosities are on display in Antiman. The criss-crossing between languages and narrative structures, the blurring of linguistic and national lines, as well as the pathos Mohabir builds for one particular life raised in suburban Florida. What makes Antiman more than required reading for our time and age is not merely how many boundaries are intersected in Mohabir’s memoir. It is his conviction to innovate in style and structure no matter how familiar the story being told remains, and to highlight not merely one man’s struggle for recognition despite his differences, but his desire to give voice to a diverse microcosm – the Indo-Guyanese community of the United States – addressing erasures on the international stage.
- From my review of Antiman, over at Moko Magazine: http://mokomagazine.org/wordpress/202...
- From my review of Antiman, over at Moko Magazine: http://mokomagazine.org/wordpress/202...
October 9, 2025
ugh antiman was such a banger…heartbreaking yet uplifting, otherworldly yet so so painfully real. the book taught me so much about guyanese and hindu culture, respectively and cohesively, as well as about the experiences of indians in the country and in the diaspora. i love mohabir’s “hybrid memoir” style: interspersions of traditional memoir writing, transcripts of dialogue between himself and his beloved paternal grandmother, poetry, journal entries, and more. the variety of storytelling methods turned this 300+ page work into a page turner for me. god, and the aspects of queerness mohabir explores were so relatable—discovery, exhaltation, joy, shame, and closeting, just to name a few.
so glad i read this one after michele recommended it!!! it has a special place in my heart :-)
so glad i read this one after michele recommended it!!! it has a special place in my heart :-)
June 20, 2021
Antiman refers to itself as a "hybrid memoir" and proves it. An immediately unique aspect is the form. Mohabir mixes prose with poetry and then goes further from prose poetry & creative nonfiction to free verse & narrative lyrics. There are journal entries and anecdote scraps and transcribed songs. Language is another thing that stands out. English melds with Hindi, Bhojpuri dissolves into Creole. It brilliantly brings to life the complex realities of these characters, the twisted turns of history, commenting on how our language shapes our world and vice versa. Mohabir translates to and from all of these languages and it looks really glorious on the page.
In terms of central themes & ideas, Rajiv Mohabir is deeply interested to trace his roots to place himself in an unbroken but multitudinous lineage as an Indo-Guyanese queer poet living in the US as an immigrant. There is a huge disconnect between his grandmother & her children who scrubbed their pasts & their Indian heritage to fit in, selective amnesia to ascend the ladder of success & leave behind what they see as uncultured ways. He is the only one who connects with his Aji to piece together her eventful life, to claim a heritage he feels does not belong to him, a perceived rejection from the home country his great grandparents left behind more than a century ago as indentured labour to the Caribbean.
The memoir is an attempt to explore his place in the world & his family, render the slur antiman (aunty-man) powerless and embrace diverse histories and languages to live up to the legacies of his ancestors. It is mostly exceptional apart from a slightly lax, romantic portrayal of India and Hinduism, along with some incorrect mythic explanation. It could have been more interrogative there. Mohabir also tends to repeat things at times which can feel off. Choosing to translate the song lyrics of a Bollywood film in a one-off incident without providing original was weird. I also sensed self-importance which was earnest but off-putting. But putting all this to the side, it's a superb book and has some magnificent sections.
(I was sent a physical ARC by the publisher in exchange for an honest review).
In terms of central themes & ideas, Rajiv Mohabir is deeply interested to trace his roots to place himself in an unbroken but multitudinous lineage as an Indo-Guyanese queer poet living in the US as an immigrant. There is a huge disconnect between his grandmother & her children who scrubbed their pasts & their Indian heritage to fit in, selective amnesia to ascend the ladder of success & leave behind what they see as uncultured ways. He is the only one who connects with his Aji to piece together her eventful life, to claim a heritage he feels does not belong to him, a perceived rejection from the home country his great grandparents left behind more than a century ago as indentured labour to the Caribbean.
The memoir is an attempt to explore his place in the world & his family, render the slur antiman (aunty-man) powerless and embrace diverse histories and languages to live up to the legacies of his ancestors. It is mostly exceptional apart from a slightly lax, romantic portrayal of India and Hinduism, along with some incorrect mythic explanation. It could have been more interrogative there. Mohabir also tends to repeat things at times which can feel off. Choosing to translate the song lyrics of a Bollywood film in a one-off incident without providing original was weird. I also sensed self-importance which was earnest but off-putting. But putting all this to the side, it's a superb book and has some magnificent sections.
(I was sent a physical ARC by the publisher in exchange for an honest review).
Read
November 1, 2021I don't usually read many memoirs, nor do I usually feel the need to continue reading something if it doesn't initially pull me in. For this one, I felt an obligation to read, a feeling that I should read it even though I struggled with it at times. Generally, I find it very hard to rate memoirs or even give much commentary on them because who am I to critique the story someone is telling of their life or the way in which they share that story?
I will say this one was hard for me for various reasons, including (but not limited to): dialect, multiple languages/references, poetry (not my forte at all), cultural knowledge which I am missing, my lack of historic & geographical background, destructive & abusive relationships, self-harm, & more. Once I decided to embrace my disquiet & go with the flow of it, regardless of my full understanding or not, I felt like an outsider looking in. Which is a good thing, imo, to upend me, to pull the rug out from under me, to destabilize me, to make me feel/see/begin to understand some of the myriad struggles, differences, challenges Mohabir has faced. His uniqueness. Lives different than mine. A skilled & clever turning of the tables, I think (even though I do not think that was the intent behind this book). It felt a bit like being tossed in to sink or swim. And while I didn't sink, neither did I swim. I learned, experienced, & ultimately walked away with some concrete knowledge, new experiences, & a surety of a vastness that I do not know.
I do very much like this review of Mohabir's memoir: https://www.ravenchronicles.org/book-...
I will say this one was hard for me for various reasons, including (but not limited to): dialect, multiple languages/references, poetry (not my forte at all), cultural knowledge which I am missing, my lack of historic & geographical background, destructive & abusive relationships, self-harm, & more. Once I decided to embrace my disquiet & go with the flow of it, regardless of my full understanding or not, I felt like an outsider looking in. Which is a good thing, imo, to upend me, to pull the rug out from under me, to destabilize me, to make me feel/see/begin to understand some of the myriad struggles, differences, challenges Mohabir has faced. His uniqueness. Lives different than mine. A skilled & clever turning of the tables, I think (even though I do not think that was the intent behind this book). It felt a bit like being tossed in to sink or swim. And while I didn't sink, neither did I swim. I learned, experienced, & ultimately walked away with some concrete knowledge, new experiences, & a surety of a vastness that I do not know.
I do very much like this review of Mohabir's memoir: https://www.ravenchronicles.org/book-...
June 17, 2022
I rarely get the opportunity to read books from Caribbean American authors, nevertheless one that shares my Indo-Guyanese American heritage (even down to having Berbician heritage) and grew up in Central Florida!
It was the perfect read for Pride/Caribbean American Heritage/Immigrant Heritage Month on navigating familial relationships, intergenerational trauma, sexuality, and all aspects of identity.
I struggled a bit with reading the Creolese parts but I love that he recounted these stories in his Aji's own voice. A great tribute to her.
It's interesting that I read this right after reading "Kaikeyi" because Kaikeyi's story and the Ramayana is such a central part of his connections with his Aji, and this memoir overall...as it is for many Hindu Guyanese folks.
It was the perfect read for Pride/Caribbean American Heritage/Immigrant Heritage Month on navigating familial relationships, intergenerational trauma, sexuality, and all aspects of identity.
I struggled a bit with reading the Creolese parts but I love that he recounted these stories in his Aji's own voice. A great tribute to her.
It's interesting that I read this right after reading "Kaikeyi" because Kaikeyi's story and the Ramayana is such a central part of his connections with his Aji, and this memoir overall...as it is for many Hindu Guyanese folks.
June 8, 2022
This is one of those books I know I'll think about on occasion for years to come. It might be impossible for me to evaluate this book objectively.
Mohabir provides an in-depth look at the complications of diasporic culture and identity. Unlike authors who exist outside of Caribbean cultures, Mohabir neither condemns nor excuses his community for their assimilation and bigotry. His intersections mean he exists between worlds, not white enough to be fully accepted in the queer community, while not straight enough to fulfill the wishes of his Indo-Guyanese family. The most powerful moments of this memoir are the points when Mohabir carves out a place for himself in a world that did not plan for him. His found family, though it fluctuates over the years, is self-created and far from homogenous.
For anyone who can't define themselves in just a word, who exists beyond the default and needs multiple sentences to explain who they are, Mohabir suggests that there is hope for a sense of community and acceptance, and that it originates with oneself.
Mohabir provides an in-depth look at the complications of diasporic culture and identity. Unlike authors who exist outside of Caribbean cultures, Mohabir neither condemns nor excuses his community for their assimilation and bigotry. His intersections mean he exists between worlds, not white enough to be fully accepted in the queer community, while not straight enough to fulfill the wishes of his Indo-Guyanese family. The most powerful moments of this memoir are the points when Mohabir carves out a place for himself in a world that did not plan for him. His found family, though it fluctuates over the years, is self-created and far from homogenous.
For anyone who can't define themselves in just a word, who exists beyond the default and needs multiple sentences to explain who they are, Mohabir suggests that there is hope for a sense of community and acceptance, and that it originates with oneself.
August 25, 2025
i put off writing this review for so long because i don't know if i have the words to describe how reading this made me feel...i don't know if i still do.
this was everything i needed that i didn't know that i needed. this held me. this sheltered me. this made me cry. sob. this hybrid memoir made my heart swell. soar...it made me feel so seen.
reading about a queer indo-guyanese person who's an artist, a writer specifically, one who sees the beauty in language, the languages or dialects or creoles or whatever you want to call it of our country, man that hit me straight in the heart. reading this was an unveiling. a lightening. an enlightening.
i feel as though i can't even begin to scratch the surface of what reading this meant to me. reading the chapters he wrote out in guyanese creole, reading them out loud to myself, man, that felt like a little prayer. truly. how i love how my people talk. how i love to hear them speak. i once hated it. it felt improper, broken, uneducated. what so many of us still feel. what he discusses his family feeling. but as i get older and older, i hear the song in it. the lilting. the rhythm. the culmination of what we all are. but moving out and still being surrounded by caribbean people, any version of the accent, that accent caribbeans have, comforts me so. i long for it. how those sounds sing a little song to me. for me. a bone deep warmth. a reminder of my mother. my grandmothers. god! and thinking about grandmothers, all of those stories his shared and how many of them from my own grandmothers i will never know. this book was a reckoning for me. a grieving and a seeing. a lightening and a loading. the weight of it still haunts my hands as the time runs out, the clock never slowing. how i long for the stories i can never know, not from their mouths, not from their memories. and i grieve how he followed his family line. how i can't really. how that's been the missing link for me always, a loss, an unknowable question since i was a child. i felt it then. the loss so profound. god, to see guyana painted in such a loving light, complex, still, difficult too, cracked my chest open. how i have come to adore my country despite its faults, but for its immense and boundless beauty. how going back every time feels so sacred. right. real. and yes, its romanticization lives in my heart, i know, but i don't care. i grew up feeling such unrelenting shame. being from a country no one ever knew of. i grew tired of attempting to explain where i was from, where the country was, what kind of person i am (race, ethnicity, etc.). and if they did know, it was always for being the country with the highest suicide rate. the jonestown massacre. never for anything of positive value, of its beauty. we didn't have any recognized celebrities or creatives or anything. people didn't think of guyanese people as smart because of our language, dubbing it "broken english," still believed by so many guyanese themselves. it felt like i was from a nowhere place with uneducated, backwards people. mohabir captures this shame so well in this. i saw myself and my experience reflected so clearly in this. and i also saw how he loved this place. its people. despite the surveillance and anti queer culture. the internalized shame. he found the beauty in our history, our people's strength. their resilience. their pride. and how all of this is embedded in the language, the culture. i always wished, deeply longed for another language. having grown up with an original language, not just english. i yearned to know my people, my family, my path, their journeys. i still do. witnessing his life as a queer creative also made me feel comforted. made me feel like it was possible. to be that and still be loved. eventually if not right now. it gave me hope. i saw the beauty in the mess of it all.
this is all i have for now, writing this two months and many books later, but i know i will come back to this book again and again, having been deeply touched and changed by it. thank you rajiv mohabir for giving me what i didn't realize i so deeply longed for. until next time.
this was everything i needed that i didn't know that i needed. this held me. this sheltered me. this made me cry. sob. this hybrid memoir made my heart swell. soar...it made me feel so seen.
reading about a queer indo-guyanese person who's an artist, a writer specifically, one who sees the beauty in language, the languages or dialects or creoles or whatever you want to call it of our country, man that hit me straight in the heart. reading this was an unveiling. a lightening. an enlightening.
i feel as though i can't even begin to scratch the surface of what reading this meant to me. reading the chapters he wrote out in guyanese creole, reading them out loud to myself, man, that felt like a little prayer. truly. how i love how my people talk. how i love to hear them speak. i once hated it. it felt improper, broken, uneducated. what so many of us still feel. what he discusses his family feeling. but as i get older and older, i hear the song in it. the lilting. the rhythm. the culmination of what we all are. but moving out and still being surrounded by caribbean people, any version of the accent, that accent caribbeans have, comforts me so. i long for it. how those sounds sing a little song to me. for me. a bone deep warmth. a reminder of my mother. my grandmothers. god! and thinking about grandmothers, all of those stories his shared and how many of them from my own grandmothers i will never know. this book was a reckoning for me. a grieving and a seeing. a lightening and a loading. the weight of it still haunts my hands as the time runs out, the clock never slowing. how i long for the stories i can never know, not from their mouths, not from their memories. and i grieve how he followed his family line. how i can't really. how that's been the missing link for me always, a loss, an unknowable question since i was a child. i felt it then. the loss so profound. god, to see guyana painted in such a loving light, complex, still, difficult too, cracked my chest open. how i have come to adore my country despite its faults, but for its immense and boundless beauty. how going back every time feels so sacred. right. real. and yes, its romanticization lives in my heart, i know, but i don't care. i grew up feeling such unrelenting shame. being from a country no one ever knew of. i grew tired of attempting to explain where i was from, where the country was, what kind of person i am (race, ethnicity, etc.). and if they did know, it was always for being the country with the highest suicide rate. the jonestown massacre. never for anything of positive value, of its beauty. we didn't have any recognized celebrities or creatives or anything. people didn't think of guyanese people as smart because of our language, dubbing it "broken english," still believed by so many guyanese themselves. it felt like i was from a nowhere place with uneducated, backwards people. mohabir captures this shame so well in this. i saw myself and my experience reflected so clearly in this. and i also saw how he loved this place. its people. despite the surveillance and anti queer culture. the internalized shame. he found the beauty in our history, our people's strength. their resilience. their pride. and how all of this is embedded in the language, the culture. i always wished, deeply longed for another language. having grown up with an original language, not just english. i yearned to know my people, my family, my path, their journeys. i still do. witnessing his life as a queer creative also made me feel comforted. made me feel like it was possible. to be that and still be loved. eventually if not right now. it gave me hope. i saw the beauty in the mess of it all.
this is all i have for now, writing this two months and many books later, but i know i will come back to this book again and again, having been deeply touched and changed by it. thank you rajiv mohabir for giving me what i didn't realize i so deeply longed for. until next time.
August 1, 2022
A well-crafted hybrid memoir by a diaspora author who defies classification. Rajiv Mohabir or Raimie as he’s called, is an Indian-American of Guyanese descent and in this book, he explores his roots in order to connect to his history and discover himself as a queer person – an Antiman as he would have been labelled in his community.
Rajiv’s connection with his grandmother or Aji is the central framework for this book. After her generation, Rajiv’s family has moved away from their culture and started embracing Christianity and Westernization as a way to assimilate. Through his interaction with his Aji and through the songs she sings, Rajiv retraces his connection to Guyana and India. The songs are presented in Bhojpuri, Creole and then in English and provide a history of how the culture evolved. I was very interested in this connection and would have loved to know more about them. Was there more than just these exchanges of stories and songs? What did Aji think of Rajiv when she finds out that he’s queer? Their connection is abruptly cut when Aji passes away. Initially the author mentions that he isn’t invited to the funeral, but later we see he attends it and makes peace with it in his own way.
I loved how there is no separation of identities – Rajiv explores his life as a queer person of colour from the Indian diaspora and presents us with the varied hues that this combination triggers. We learn about how he feels excluded in various places because of his various identities. His family shuns him because of his queerness. People don’t really consider him Indian because of his Guyanese descent and he feels like an outsider even in a South-Asian diaspora setting. It was eye-opening to see how these places that are meant to foster community can actually be alienating. Rajiv still manages to find friends there through others like him. These and other connections help him find his footing as an independent person. It is these individuals more than his actual family that are there for Rajiv at his times of need.
As someone from India, I found his obsession both with the Ramayana and caste a little irksome. I was disappointed by the fact that he calls out all the evils of colonialism so often but remained mostly silent about casteism and Hindu nationalism. Both of these are touched upon, so we know the author wasn’t completely unaware of these things. I just wish he had made his stance on both much clearer. It felt sometimes like he was only exploring his upper-caste roots and ignoring other parts that he acknowledges are present. He suspects that there are Dalits and Muslim people in his ancestry somewhere but doesn’t seem curious to explore any aspects of these identities.
Overall, this a very well-written and perfectly unique book. I liked the format of it and Rajiv’s prose. It was revealing to read about the Guyanese Indian community and their particular history. I do hope there are more works like this!
Rajiv’s connection with his grandmother or Aji is the central framework for this book. After her generation, Rajiv’s family has moved away from their culture and started embracing Christianity and Westernization as a way to assimilate. Through his interaction with his Aji and through the songs she sings, Rajiv retraces his connection to Guyana and India. The songs are presented in Bhojpuri, Creole and then in English and provide a history of how the culture evolved. I was very interested in this connection and would have loved to know more about them. Was there more than just these exchanges of stories and songs? What did Aji think of Rajiv when she finds out that he’s queer? Their connection is abruptly cut when Aji passes away. Initially the author mentions that he isn’t invited to the funeral, but later we see he attends it and makes peace with it in his own way.
I loved how there is no separation of identities – Rajiv explores his life as a queer person of colour from the Indian diaspora and presents us with the varied hues that this combination triggers. We learn about how he feels excluded in various places because of his various identities. His family shuns him because of his queerness. People don’t really consider him Indian because of his Guyanese descent and he feels like an outsider even in a South-Asian diaspora setting. It was eye-opening to see how these places that are meant to foster community can actually be alienating. Rajiv still manages to find friends there through others like him. These and other connections help him find his footing as an independent person. It is these individuals more than his actual family that are there for Rajiv at his times of need.
As someone from India, I found his obsession both with the Ramayana and caste a little irksome. I was disappointed by the fact that he calls out all the evils of colonialism so often but remained mostly silent about casteism and Hindu nationalism. Both of these are touched upon, so we know the author wasn’t completely unaware of these things. I just wish he had made his stance on both much clearer. It felt sometimes like he was only exploring his upper-caste roots and ignoring other parts that he acknowledges are present. He suspects that there are Dalits and Muslim people in his ancestry somewhere but doesn’t seem curious to explore any aspects of these identities.
Overall, this a very well-written and perfectly unique book. I liked the format of it and Rajiv’s prose. It was revealing to read about the Guyanese Indian community and their particular history. I do hope there are more works like this!
January 2, 2025
This book and its author changed my life. Somehow he has found a way to beautifully honor his ancestors whilst his own family rejects both him and his efforts. I’m thankful for stories like this of resilience and acceptance of self. In an afterword interview, Rajiv says “I’ve stopped trying to guess what they feel about me.” May we all arrive to a peace like this.
August 6, 2021
An incredible literary experience. A mix of writing styles, languages, and experiences in his life to showcase and hold a mirror to multifaceted existence.
November 23, 2021
4.5 stars
I haven't read many memoirs over my life, possibly because so many of them seem so tragic but this year seem to have discovered a few gems and this is one of them. As a gay Indo-Guyanese man living in a family where fitting in to a new country is paramount, including rejecting their Hindu and Creole roots to a large degree, and where the word Antiman is used as a slur for a gay man, this is a memoir with its fair share of sadness.
Rajiv contends with racism and homophobia in various ways and ends up moving to New York from Florida to feel like he is among people who are like him and understand him. He has relationships and encounters that run the gamut of romantic to violent and meets people from around the world as he attends various writing and political conventions and courses around the U.S. He is an ESL teacher, he protests injustice, hones his writing and tries to make the most of New York club life.
He also spends a year in India learning Hindu and trying to track down members of his family who moved from India to Guyana and as a lover of writing about India - one of the white enthusiasts Rajiv himself laughs at ;)- I loved this section. What links all the events he writes about however, is his relationship with his Aji, his paternal grandmother who speaks Creole and Bhojpuri and has a store of songs and stories of life in Guyana. Rajiv wants to collect and record as much of these as he can so they won't be lost -very few of his family at all interested -and throughout the book are interspersed some of these songs or poems in both Bhojpuri, Creole and his translations into English. There are also some of Rajiv's own poems scattered throughout the book and though not a great reader of poetry, the way in which they tied in with the emotions and events he was writing about made them more meaningful.
Rajiv is fighting for equality among all genders, sexualities, races, caste's, there is one chapter for example that is title Islamophobic Misreadings- as a bearded brown man Rajiv is often mistaken for Muslim. There is one chapter where he gives alternative outcomes for his outing by his cousin to the rest of his family and as I've said, songs and poems are scattered throughout the text. This is not just a straightforward prose memoir of a life but is more engaging because of that.
The mission statement of Restless Books who published this memoir after it won their 2019 prize for New Immigrant Writing says; 'We seek extraordinary international literature for adults and young readers that feeds our restlessness: our hunger for new perspectives, passion for other cultures and languages, and eagerness to explore beyond the confines of the familiar. For me, this is exactly what this book fulfilled.
'I wanted to stop hiding. I wanted to tell them I was queer. Queer sexually, queer religiously, queer by caste, and queer countried. I wanted to scream but I had to play this shadow game of hiding myself to learn anything about where I came from. I had to pretend to be a high-casted straight man.'
I haven't read many memoirs over my life, possibly because so many of them seem so tragic but this year seem to have discovered a few gems and this is one of them. As a gay Indo-Guyanese man living in a family where fitting in to a new country is paramount, including rejecting their Hindu and Creole roots to a large degree, and where the word Antiman is used as a slur for a gay man, this is a memoir with its fair share of sadness.
Rajiv contends with racism and homophobia in various ways and ends up moving to New York from Florida to feel like he is among people who are like him and understand him. He has relationships and encounters that run the gamut of romantic to violent and meets people from around the world as he attends various writing and political conventions and courses around the U.S. He is an ESL teacher, he protests injustice, hones his writing and tries to make the most of New York club life.
He also spends a year in India learning Hindu and trying to track down members of his family who moved from India to Guyana and as a lover of writing about India - one of the white enthusiasts Rajiv himself laughs at ;)- I loved this section. What links all the events he writes about however, is his relationship with his Aji, his paternal grandmother who speaks Creole and Bhojpuri and has a store of songs and stories of life in Guyana. Rajiv wants to collect and record as much of these as he can so they won't be lost -very few of his family at all interested -and throughout the book are interspersed some of these songs or poems in both Bhojpuri, Creole and his translations into English. There are also some of Rajiv's own poems scattered throughout the book and though not a great reader of poetry, the way in which they tied in with the emotions and events he was writing about made them more meaningful.
Rajiv is fighting for equality among all genders, sexualities, races, caste's, there is one chapter for example that is title Islamophobic Misreadings- as a bearded brown man Rajiv is often mistaken for Muslim. There is one chapter where he gives alternative outcomes for his outing by his cousin to the rest of his family and as I've said, songs and poems are scattered throughout the text. This is not just a straightforward prose memoir of a life but is more engaging because of that.
The mission statement of Restless Books who published this memoir after it won their 2019 prize for New Immigrant Writing says; 'We seek extraordinary international literature for adults and young readers that feeds our restlessness: our hunger for new perspectives, passion for other cultures and languages, and eagerness to explore beyond the confines of the familiar. For me, this is exactly what this book fulfilled.
'I wanted to stop hiding. I wanted to tell them I was queer. Queer sexually, queer religiously, queer by caste, and queer countried. I wanted to scream but I had to play this shadow game of hiding myself to learn anything about where I came from. I had to pretend to be a high-casted straight man.'
Read
August 7, 2023“As Kumar and I sped down the narrow gullies cluttered with women wrapped in saris, men with hennaed beards, children chasing puppies, there was only music. Music in the streets. Music in the cows. Music in the pigs. Music in the shop fronts. Music filling my ears. Music flooding my heart. The baba's words mixed with Aji's. May you live long.”
January 9, 2022
An absolute riot - of language, of prose and lyric, of place and space, of emotions - that made me reflect on my own relationship with my heritage. A touching tribute to Ajji's.
November 30, 2023
at the first half i was like this is confusing and also kind of just playing into usual diaspora poetry tropes but at the second half it just got really real and moving and i liked 👍
February 4, 2022
This hybrid memoir is just that - hybrid. Mohabir has interspersed essays about about his life and family with poems and song lyrics translated between English, Creole, Guyanese Bhojpuri, and Hindi. Between these are stories about heritage, colonialism, spirituality, and sexuality. This is a story of exploring identity a right to find and embody the fullness of the various parts that make up your identity.
This is an incredibly written story about leaning into and trying to unearth a heritage that is disappearing due to time's inevitable dilution and neglect when someone is divorced from their originating culture for generations. I personally do not know much about Indo-Caribbean culture and history, so I appreciated being able to read this book. Mohabir struggles to shift focus from his culture being "broken" to being real and important. And also he deliberately works to reclaim what was taken and lost over time.
This is also a slow read, a deliberate read, with the love of language pressing the pages. Slowly reading through the multiple translations of his grandmother's folk songs really add another dimension to the memoir. Highly recommend!
I read this book for the @unerasedbc bookclub, which focuses on Asian American stories.
This is an incredibly written story about leaning into and trying to unearth a heritage that is disappearing due to time's inevitable dilution and neglect when someone is divorced from their originating culture for generations. I personally do not know much about Indo-Caribbean culture and history, so I appreciated being able to read this book. Mohabir struggles to shift focus from his culture being "broken" to being real and important. And also he deliberately works to reclaim what was taken and lost over time.
This is also a slow read, a deliberate read, with the love of language pressing the pages. Slowly reading through the multiple translations of his grandmother's folk songs really add another dimension to the memoir. Highly recommend!
I read this book for the @unerasedbc bookclub, which focuses on Asian American stories.
August 4, 2022
Many stories are told in Antiman but it is all one story: Mohabir’s. This is a family saga and a coming-of-age tale set against the backdrop of the terrible history of colonization and East Indian indentureship under the British Empire. It is also a story of multiple migrations: from the UK to North America, from the Caribbean to North America, and within America itself. It is a story of growing up brown and queer in societies inclined to associate both with danger and shame. It is fitting, then, that this book is subtitled “a hybrid memoir”. The hybrid form—the text interweaves poetry, prose, translations, speculations, “fauxtales”, misreadings, satirical etymologies and more—is not just a narrative strategy. It mirrors the personality at the heart of the book; the fact that we are all made of different parts.
The very title of the book, Antiman, is evidence of a writer in profound engagement with words. In an author’s note, Mohabir explains how the word is a Caribbean slur for a queer man and but also has a reflective surface in which people might see “ante-man”, “anti-man”, or even “aunty man”. Given the hurtful way the word is wielded in the story told by Mohabir, his re-appropriation of it is all the more powerful. But the translator in Mohabir also sees the word, profoundly, as a kind of archive: “The word antiman represents and holds a history for me, one of migration and survival.” It’s worth paying attention to this statement. Here, antiman is a seed transplanted from one culture into another. That it has lasted when so much has faded is reason for hope. And yet, it is also a pejorative word, a word that must be overcome. “Survival” then refers to the word through time, the word as a weapon, and the word as vessel now re-appropriated by a queer speaker who repositions it as a shield.
I come away with a sense of a sophisticated book that is almost Cubist its form and content, its politics and poetry, its assemblages and portraits, its engagement with the mysterious spaces between what can be spelled out and what is untranslatable. It is a beautiful self-portrait, in a world still in progress.
December 17, 2025
3.5 - The identity conflicts that come up for descendants of the Hindustani diaspora and the complicated cultural development from subsequent immigration patterns are not commonly highlighted in most books that I have been exposed to, and for me the way Rajiv's exploration of Guyanese-Indian history and culture was written was deeply moving. There were segments of this book, especially in the chapters about Rajiv's Aji, that were stunning in their writing and were up there with some of the most impactful literature I've ever read.
While the first half of the memoir focused on his cultural identity, the complex history of West Indian identity, and the author's journey to India, the second half raced through the development of his personal and familial identity as the narrative described his estrangement from his family due to his identity as a queer person holding on to a culture that they have rejected and the formative subsequent years of his life.
The "hybrid" nature of this book, with writing flying through different narrative styles and literary tools, added a lot of depth and beauty to the first half of this memoir, but I felt like it dramatically undercut the pacing and led to the second half of this book feeling like it overlooked themes and moments of the author's journey that deserved more time.
I found this mostly exceptional in many aspects but in the places where it was lacking, it needed a lot more dedicated to it. Nonetheless, this left me wanting more - more of this incredible style, more of these themes and stories, more Guyanese and Guyanese-Americans immortalizing an overlooked history through their writing.
While the first half of the memoir focused on his cultural identity, the complex history of West Indian identity, and the author's journey to India, the second half raced through the development of his personal and familial identity as the narrative described his estrangement from his family due to his identity as a queer person holding on to a culture that they have rejected and the formative subsequent years of his life.
The "hybrid" nature of this book, with writing flying through different narrative styles and literary tools, added a lot of depth and beauty to the first half of this memoir, but I felt like it dramatically undercut the pacing and led to the second half of this book feeling like it overlooked themes and moments of the author's journey that deserved more time.
I found this mostly exceptional in many aspects but in the places where it was lacking, it needed a lot more dedicated to it. Nonetheless, this left me wanting more - more of this incredible style, more of these themes and stories, more Guyanese and Guyanese-Americans immortalizing an overlooked history through their writing.
March 15, 2025
4.5ish stars. This was such a unique and beautiful memoir. The memoir goes through Mohabir’s journey to understanding his true roots, which were by default taken away from him as a descendant of Indo-Guyanese indentured servants. His father’s side of his family are ashamed of their Indian roots, preventing him from asking that side for their family history except for his aji (paternal grandma), who loved poetry, singing, and storytelling. As a result, this memoir is centered on what he was able to learn from his aji. Big parts of the memoir also weave in Mohabir’s queer identity—being an “antiman” (Caribbean slur for a gay man) and what that meant to him as an Indo-Guyanese man raised Christian. Though some moments were traumatizing, Mohabir includes it all and it was clear to me how his queerness put a wedge in between his figuring out his identity through his family. A good amount of the memoir is set in NYC, Queens specifically, where Mohabir further explores his queerness openly and unapologetically. I was so proud and happy to read about what made Queens so special to the author. Throughout the book is exquisite poetry. Though at times they were not easy to read because they were in Guyanese Creole. I really appreciated that he did not water down the poetry’s meaning to make them more understandable.
October 27, 2024
This is fascinating “hybrid memoir” of a gay Indo Guyanese-American and all the complexities that identity brings. I liked this memoir for the attention it brought to the lived experience of far more people than most realize. It also incorporated history that is often swept up and conveniently forgotten, or (worse) oversimplified to fit a black and white worldview. There are sections written in Creolese.
I didn’t give it 5 stars because I felt the balance of time given to different relationships felt off, and some of that might be out of respect to the living. I wanted more on his relationship with his dad, specifically. As a reader I also wanted more context of the songs he chose to showcase. Given most of them were learned from his grandmother, but most of them had to do with the complications of sibling relationships and from the standpoint of the female when it seemed like that was the least complicated relationship he had within his family. Was the choice to give more context to his grandmothers life? If so I think that would be a hard ask for people who have had no experience within Indo guyanese families.
I didn’t give it 5 stars because I felt the balance of time given to different relationships felt off, and some of that might be out of respect to the living. I wanted more on his relationship with his dad, specifically. As a reader I also wanted more context of the songs he chose to showcase. Given most of them were learned from his grandmother, but most of them had to do with the complications of sibling relationships and from the standpoint of the female when it seemed like that was the least complicated relationship he had within his family. Was the choice to give more context to his grandmothers life? If so I think that would be a hard ask for people who have had no experience within Indo guyanese families.
January 29, 2022
xiii A few words of love, if you read them, will make you wise.-Kabir p38, I had seen it before: white scholars who tried to out-Indian me by adopting the study of India as their entire personality. p 67 Indian chicken, foreign gait. It was true. Even I laughed. I may have looked the same as everyone else in the train car but there was something about my gait, about my affect, that betrayed my upbringing p159 Sometimes being exposed hollows you. p181 Being a sensitive person is like having a superpower. p207 You feel it's a bit imperialistic for a white person to tell you so definitively what you are and where you're from. Your friend sometimes tells others about how "untraditional" your family is. Your friend has never had to explain a long history for people to understand where he's from. p314. I know you are singing too. You have taught us all the sounds a heart can bear.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 23, 2023
it's hard for me to fully get behind this book because you'd think being queer and indo-trinidadian i would relate to this book on a personal level, and i do not at all. i feel that trini/caribbean culture is complete on its own and feel no need to search for roots in a country/culture I don't know and don't care about at all. and i find it strange that someone from trinidad/guyana can speak of their their culture and ancestry with no mention of the Black/African culture that has shaped both countries.
i genuinely worried that people reading this book will take this to be representative of the all. however, a memoir only tells one person story, and the writing/telling/content of this deserves 5 star.
i genuinely worried that people reading this book will take this to be representative of the all. however, a memoir only tells one person story, and the writing/telling/content of this deserves 5 star.
October 11, 2023
This read like three memoirs. One memoir is Rajiv trying to reconnect to his family’s pre-indenture past, another explores what it means to be gay and Indo-Caribbean, and the third is a dysfunctional family memoir. The memoirs never really meet each other in a cohesive way. Perhaps the book’s disjointed structure is intended to mirror the author’s fractured identities.
The book is at times repetitive, and I found myself growing impatient with the experimental structure (prose, poetry, songs and poetry in Hindi/Creole).
A lot of what the author intended to do seems unresolved. We are told he wants to grapple with what it means to be gay and Guyanese (hence the title “Antiman”) but his Guyanese identity feels like the least explored element in the book.
The book is at times repetitive, and I found myself growing impatient with the experimental structure (prose, poetry, songs and poetry in Hindi/Creole).
A lot of what the author intended to do seems unresolved. We are told he wants to grapple with what it means to be gay and Guyanese (hence the title “Antiman”) but his Guyanese identity feels like the least explored element in the book.
January 29, 2022
Although this story is filled with turmoil, it manages to work itself into a fable of sorts. We see the struggles of a very specific intersection of identities, and how it plays out throughout the course of many years. Paired up with the team of old wisdom, reconnecting with ones' culture and spiritual path, and finding closure, author Rajiv Mohabir presents a "hybrid memoir" that doesn't hide its intent, nor does it shy away from the difficult realities of life, family, and who we are at our core.
February 26, 2025
5/10
Don’t get me wrong I love a memoir but this one didn’t have me reaching for it continuously. Maybe I just had high expectations for it due to the ratings but it seemed aimless at times. I was searching for the plot and at times it was difficult to read considering I don’t speak/understand the native language of the author. This rating could be entirely based on my inability to relate to it but this book is definitely for those who are feeling outcasted. My heart goes out to the author for their loss, bravery, and lack of forgiveness from their loved ones.
Don’t get me wrong I love a memoir but this one didn’t have me reaching for it continuously. Maybe I just had high expectations for it due to the ratings but it seemed aimless at times. I was searching for the plot and at times it was difficult to read considering I don’t speak/understand the native language of the author. This rating could be entirely based on my inability to relate to it but this book is definitely for those who are feeling outcasted. My heart goes out to the author for their loss, bravery, and lack of forgiveness from their loved ones.
May 9, 2025
Part memoir, part poetry book, part historical research--this inventive Guyanese-American narrative provides a deep look into one man's complicated journey to selfness. In finding himself, in coming out as gay, in trying to discover home as a thrice-uprooted immigrant, Rajiv's deeply personal narrative somehow also reflects every man's journey if we examine our own lives. Who are we really? How loudly do our histories echo? And what do we owe our families? This memoir, a wonderful addition to Caribbean literature, asks these questions as Rajiv unspools a truly unique coming of age account.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 13, 2025
A really beautiful retrospective on the author's formative and young adult years as a young gay man in a South Asian household while he learns poetry and music from his Aji, his grandmother. So many topics seamlessly woven together - sometimes the pace of the book suffered and I felt a little bogged down by information and by language but then the 'plot' would pick up again and carry me off and I was invested.
A hybrid memoir indeed - pick this up if you're a lover of music, poetry and culture clashes
A hybrid memoir indeed - pick this up if you're a lover of music, poetry and culture clashes
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