Latchmie Kumarie Vainmati Kallicharran (5 June 1951 – 20 January 2002) was a Guyanese writer. She was one of the pioneers of

Indo-Guyanese Indo-Guyanese or Indian-Guyanese, are people of Indian origin who are Guyanese nationals tracing their ancestry to India and the wider subcontinent. They are the descendants of indentured servants and settlers who migrated from India beginnin ...

cultural awareness. She also organized and presented cultural programmes, the first being

Lalla-Rookh ''Lalla Rookh'' is an Oriental romance by Irish poet Thomas Moore, published in 1817. The title is taken from the name of the heroine of the frame tale, the (fictional) daughter of the 17th-century Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. The work consis ...

. She staged her first show in the early 1970s when there was considerable resistance within the ruling PNC to regard Indo-Guyanese culture as being truly Guyanese. She organized dance and music shows, working to incorporate

Chutney music Chutney music is a fusion genre of Indian folk music, specifically Bhojpuri folk music, with local Caribbean calypso and soca music, and later on Bollywood music. This genre of music that developed in Trinidad and Tobago is popular in Trinida ...

into Mashramani, as well as the organization of an important photographic exhibition of Indo-Guyanese history and artifacts. Kallicharan grew up in Berbice, Guyana and attended the Berbice Educational Institute before attending

University of Guyana The University of Guyana, in Georgetown, Guyana, is Guyana's national higher education institution. It was established in April 1963 with the following Mission: "To discover, generate, disseminate, and apply knowledge of the highest standard for ...

, where she also worked as a librarian. She died in a fire in early 2002. She was posthumously awarded IAC honors by the Indian Action Committee.

Works

* 1986 ''Shraadanjali'' anthology of Indo-Guyanese poetry * 1996 ''They Came in Ships: An Anthology of Indo-Guyanese Prose and Poetry'' Lloyd Searwar, Joel Benjamin, Ian McDonald, Lakshmi Kallicharan

References

1951 births 2002 deaths Guyanese women writers Deaths from fire 20th-century women writers 20th-century Guyanese writers {{Guyana-writer-stub Indo-Guyanese people