Rooplall monar biography of albert

The passing of Rooplall Monar (1945-2024) brings us almost to the end of the line of those who wrote about Indians on the sugar plantations as a “lived experience”.

Monar was born in one of the 101 logies of Lusignan, on the East Coast of Demerara, and, in 1953, moved to the new housing scheme in neighbouring Annandale. This housing scheme was established during the early 1950s, when the sugar planters decided to move all workers out of the logies that had originally adjoined sugar factories.
Monar’s poems, short stories and novels first deal with life in the logies (Backdam People; Jhanjat), and then with the housing scheme (High House and Radio).

Possibly in Lusignan, as in the ninety-four logies of Uitvlugt with which I am familiar, there was a smattering of African Guyanese in addition to a “Bajan Quarter” that housed immigrants from the small islands in the early 1920s.
It was a critical period of Guy