[citation needed] The book is a biography of Sujaria, the great-grandmother of the author[3] and simultaneously an exploration of the indentured labor system, which was practiced in the Caribbean.

[4] Tracing Sujaria's 1903 journey as a Brahmin caste woman from Bihar, India's poorest state, to the sugarcane plantations of British Guiana,[5] Bahadur wove both archival and published records,[6] as well as folk and oral sources,[citation needed] to tell the broader story of "the exodus and settlement of Indian women to the Caribbean".

[1] The word coolie, which was used in the Atlantic World to refer to primarily Indian and Chinese indentured workers from Asia, is considered a pejorative.

[3][7] Bahadur chose the title to acknowledge the stigma[5] but also as a metaphor for the baggage women carried as a result of colonialism.

[3] Reviewers have pointed to the importance the work holds for a "neglected area of scholarship", about the age when Asian indentured workers replaced African slaves on plantations in the Caribbean,[8] as well as its exploration of feminist themes of societal and family oppression, poverty, lack of power, sexual abuse and violence.