Identity

Throughout the memoir, the author enacts his search for identity by tracing his relationship to his grandmother’s songs and stories. In the memoir’s opening section, “Open the Door,” Rajiv is curious “to know more” about his childhood, about his ancestry, and about his culture (4). By spending “hours sitting, recording, and later transcribing and translating” Aji’s songs, Rajiv is searching for the essence of who he is (20). “I sat at a crossroads,” he says at the start of Antiman, “I did not understand myself but wanted to. I wanted to sit in the negative capability of my Aji’s songs; to learn them to piece my own broken self together” (4). Having been told throughout his life that “Guyanese are different,” Rajiv feels excluded from almost every social sphere he occupies (219). Even in the context of his family, Rajiv is made to feel like an outsider. Because...