1Nandita Paul 2Amit Bhattacharya
¹Research Scholar, Department of English, University of Gour Banga
²Professor, Department of English, University of Gour Banga
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21659/jsae/v3n1/v3n112
[Article History: Received: 4 April 2026. Accepted: 14 August 2026. Published: 26 September 2026]
Abstract
The study examines how the imperial myth(ya)s (fabrications) of equality and opulence are unmasked in David Dabydeen’s poetry collection Coolie Odyssey (1988). It analyzes how the Indo-Guyanese-British poet writes the title poem not as a heroic epic like that of the mythical superman Odysseus, but as an anti-epic of a “sub-man” whose coolitude subsumes a painful passage between different worlds and cultures and exhibits a “limbo consciousness.” It highlights how the “sub-man” is doubly bound as a colonial subject in the Albion Estate and an immigrant in the imperial metropole. The paper also highlights how the “sub-man” is doubly bound as a colonial subject in the Albion Estate and an immigrant in the imperial metropole. The study considers how, in the ironic pairing of the poems “Coolie Mother” and “Coolie Son,” David Dabydeen mocks the imperial promise of amelioration for the immigrants: a mother sacrifices her body and life to free her son from the lifelong servitude of the cane fields through education in England, only to find him actually a “Toilet Attendant,” masquerading as a “Sanitary Inspector.” Finally, it projects Coolie Odyssey as a counter-epic that reveals how strategic mythologisation perpetuates the infrastructure of illusion and exploitation and affects the indentured laborers and their deracinated descendants.
Keywords: Coolitude, Limbo Consciousness, Anti-epic, Indenture, Strategic Mythologization
