Go-Between Girl
My Indentured Roots as Reclaimed Present

Quotes

“A brilliant exploration of the ghost in the machine of global capitalism, linking colonization and indentured servitude with the gig-work of today. Driven by the author's own personal journey, this is essential reading for anyone interested in labour, history, race, class, migration, and the buried history of the money that makes the world go round. Grateful for this addition to our cultural conversation.”
—Hannah Sung, culture commentator

“Precise, sardonic, and thoroughly compelling, Gunraj’s writing is a marvel. She scales hard terrain—multi-hyphenate identity, the push and pull of family history, and the centuries of offhand cruelty that have shaped modern Canadian society—with remarkable lightness and humour, and in so doing has created a collection that is both indispensable and totally engrossing.”
—Dan Werb, social scientist and award-winning writer of The Invisible Siege

“An accomplished novelist, Andrea Gunraj writes with humour and language that sparkles of what it means to have been born and raised in the salad bowl of present-day Canada. In emotionally and intellectually engaging chapters, part personal memoir and part social analysis, she teases and probes the hazy borderlines separating whiteness from otherness, servitude from sovereignty, illuminating the in-betweenness that shaped our world and points us to our interlinked future and shared identity as Canadians.”
—Karim Alrawi, author of Book of Sands, former media and civil society advisor to the United Nations Development Programme

“A sharp, generous, and revelatory book. Gunraj’s powerful and tender insights will stay with you long after reading.”
—Allison LaSorda, Contributing Editor, Brick, A Literary Journal

“In Go-Between Girl, Gunraj self-excavates to tenderly eviscerate our understandings of power and belonging. With instinctual precision, Gunraj turns her eye inward to inspect the looping threads of her personal history, the muddied pathways of indentured servitude echoing in shadows across generations of women who grasp for meaning and survival. Gunraj’s voice resounds with deep honesty; she invites us into her consciousness with such warmth and intimacy, then guides us with rooted expertise through difficult revelations about the things that matter to us so urgently today—questions about what it means to linger in the in-between when confronting race and responsibility, personal betrayals of justice, the hauntings of poverty and family, and all the stifling, heart-rending pains of finding our place in the world. Gunraj treads the in-between with deep empathy and sharp-eyed observation; this is an urgent and essential work of self-shattering recognition.”
—Shoilee Khan, writer and editor

“Andrea Gunraj’s Go-Between Girl is a triumph of curiosity, insight, and heart. In a series of stylistically exquisite essays, Gunraj explores the insidious aftermath of indentured servitude, the hollow benevolence of white feminism, and the quest for authentic representation. Gunraj shows a breathtaking willingness to challenge herself in these essays. She brings us close, examining her own contradictions and complacencies, all the while offering an incisive study of broader failures within our systems and communities. Go-Between Girl is electric. Gunraj’s words serve as a rich and vital reminder that scrutiny is not an antithesis to hope: it’s a precursor. A reminder that we don’t need to hold our tongues to hold space for each other.”
—Hollay Ghadery, award-winning author of Fuse