Photograph of Wazir Ishmael

DESCRIPTION
Wazir Ishmael is pictured here, at age 10, with his father Yussuph Ishmael, a dispenser at the Rose Hall Sugar Estate in Guyana, and Alan Dabbs, whose family Wazir stayed with during school holidays when he was in boarding school.

Wazir Ishmael journeyed as a ten year-old boy from the sugar plantation in Berbice, Guyana where his father had worked as a "dispenser" (a cross between a pharmacist and physician) to the Bentham Grammar School, a boarding school in England. When he arrived there in 1970, he was one of two children of color there. The school provided special meals for him that wouldn't violate his dietary restrictions as a Muslim. The things he carried from Guyana to the United States were his father's copies of the novels of Edgar Mittelholzer, who captured life in the Corentyne countryside of Guyana, where Wazir was born and spent his childhood.

THEMES
Visitors & Exchanges

ADDITIONAL METADATA
Date: July 19, 2020
Subject(s): Wazir Ishmael
Type: Photograph
Source: Archival Creators Fellowship Program
Location: Hollywood, Florida

PROVENANCE
Collection: Gaiutra Bahadur Fellowship Project
Item History: 2020-10-26 (created); 2020-10-26 (modified)

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