ANANDIBAI JOSHEE (1865-87) was not only India's first female physician, but also the first Indian woman to travel across the forbidden 'black waters and pursue an education in the United States-with the help of a kind American ally.
The poems in Shikha Malaviya's Anandibar Joshee: A Life in Poems are a chronological rendering of Anandibai's life-from her birth and childhood in the bustling town of Kalyan in Maharashtra and her marriage to an eccentric man sixteen years older, to early childbirth and the loss of her infant, from which her desire to become a doctor was born.
With elegance and a stark beauty, these poems bring to life the struggles and accomplishments of a woman who travelled across the seas to pursue a medical education before her return to India as a doctor While her adventures were cut short by tragedy, her story lives on through these poems that thunder from across the decades with a voice that cannot be silenced.
The following historical persona poems are culled from the life and letters of Anandi Gopal Joshee (also spelled as Joshi), known widely as Anandibai, who lived from 1865-1887.
Anandibai was India's first female physician and the first Indian woman to enter the United States in 1883 to pursue an education in medicine. An interest in Anandibai resurfaced around 2017, when her black and white photograph from Drexel College of Medicine's Legacy Center archive went viral on the Internet. Her life story is a compelling one of empowerment and American and Indian allyship-in which Anandibai broke tradition and social conventions by crossing tabooed black waters (kala pani) to pursue an education and career held exclusively by men. Until very recently, Anandibai's story has been told through the lens of her husband being her savior and inspiration. And while he encouraged her, it was often by coercion and violence. By telling Anandibai's story through poems in her own voice, my hope is to not only restore Anandibai's agency and give her story back to her, but to also highlight her inner strength, determination, sharp intellect, and desire to help other women.
But how and why did I write this book? In 2017, I was researching South Asian history for a long lyric poem I was writing on the racism I had experienced as a child while growing up in Minnesota in the early '80s. In this poem, I wanted to confront a childhood bully with facts and dazzle him, to let him know that my family wasn't the first to have come from India, so that his words, 'go back to where you came from, would ring hollow. It had always been convenient for me to slip into the notion that I was the 'other' and that America wasn't my actual home, because I hadn't seen myself or my history reflected in my surroundings. This led me on a wild goose chase of sorts to find out who was the first woman from India to touch American shores. And suddenly there she was, seated in a sepia-tinted photograph, next to two other women, dressed elegantly in a saree, her Mona Lisa-like glance following me everywhere, her lips curled up in a half-smile, her image radiating such fierce determination that I had to know more. Who was this woman and how did she get to Philadelphia all alone from India in the 19th century and why? How did she break away from that iron grip of tradition where women were largely homebound tending to family and manage to cross kala pani, those black ocean waters that were considered tainted? I was riveted and literally felt a shiver-of acknowledgment and discovery, this validation of knowing that all along there had been others before us. This was how I stumbled upon the extraordinary life of Anandi Gopal Joshee, known more informally as Anandibai, possibly the first Indian (Hindu) woman to have come to the United States. Until very recently, Anandibai's story was limited to her geographic community in India and had been told through the lens of her husband being her advocate and guide. I wondered if I were to tell Anandibai's story through poems in her own voice, what would that mean? How would it change the narrative? Would it give her agency back to her? Would it give South Asian Americans a deeper sense of roots and history? And supposing it did, was I the right person to undertake this task? I was a poet after all, and not a historian.
For privacy concerns, please view our Privacy Policy
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Statutory Information
Manage Wishlist