Canada-based Guyanese scholar launches 1st book, “An Ordinary Landscape of Violence: Women Loving Women in Guyana”

Canadian-based Guyanese scholar Dr Preity Kumar on Thursday launched her first book about violence against women in Guyana, particularly those associated with the LGBTQ+ community.
Published in July this year, the book, “An Ordinary Landscape of Violence: Women Loving Women in Guyana”, is a thought-provoking piece of literature that sheds light on the struggles faced by women enduring gender-based violence in Guyana.
The book was officially launched at Moray House in Georgetown, and according to Dr Kumar, her work was inspired by the perilous experiences of mainly two women in Guyana; however, it shines light on various social research on violence against women in the country.
“In this book, you would see me asking questions about what it would mean for us to think about violence beyond the physical, beyond the visible, and beyond the spectacular. Also, what would it mean to think of violence already embedded in the landscape that we are a part of, and already present in our relationships rather than as a single event?” she detailed.
During her address at the launch of the book, she provided statistical data regarding gender-based violence in Guyana going back to 2019.
“In 2019, for example, a health and life experiences survey indicated that 55 per cent of all Guyanese people aged 15 to 64 have experienced at least one form of violence. For a country with less than half a million people, the United Nations reported, Guyana has the highest rate of suicide in the Caribbean region, and 85% of women are often murdered by an intimate partner,” she declared.
On that note, Dr Kumar revealed that attempts are being made to have the book included in various university studies. Currently, a collaboration with Guyana’s Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD) has been established to enlighten students about the issues outlined in the book.
Founder and Managing Director of Guyana’s Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD), Joel Simpson, has revealed the details of this collaboration.
“We are starting to collaborate with UG students at the Institute for Gender Studies; and, hopefully, we will develop that programme, making it accessible to university students. We are collaborating with Prof. Chaves Jules at the university,” he disclosed.
Additionally, an in-depth analysis will be conducted to find out why violence is happening in schools. One of the main reasons for this analysis is that Guyana does not currently have any proper statistical information on gender-based violence within the school system.
“We will do research next year on anti-gender violence in schools, and how it affects LGBT teachers and students. I think it is very important to gather information on what is going on in schools around this kind of biased violence. We don’t have a lot of information, we just document reports when we hear about incidents; but we also need to talk about this a little more, regarding why this violence is manifesting itself in schools,” Dr Kumar has said.
Dr Kumar is an Indo-Guyanese scholar, activist and educator whose work examines women loving women relationships, violence, and LGBTQ rights in Guyana. She holds a Ph.D. in Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies from York University in Toronto, Canada, and her current research focuses on the coloniality of violence in the lives of queer women. Before arriving at URI, she taught at Hamilton College, the College of New Jersey, and York University.
She is currently working on completing her first monograph, “An Ordinary Landscape: Coloniality, Violence, and Sexual Politics in Guyana.”