Methods for Hearing Women's Transoceanic Voices

This chapter challenges a core theoretical assumption in diaspora and oceanic humanities in which men are portrayed as mobile and women as stationary. By investigating the deep cultural associations between women, mobility, and water in Punjabi culture, this chapter articulates how Punjabi Sikh women were associated with the fluidity of water and air, and men with the fixity of inherited land. It theorizes how Ocean as Method aids researchers in accessing and interpreting women's mobilities. Through a navigation of the author's riverine research journey, it offers strategies for capturing the capaciousness of women's mobilities, as well as the need for a historical biographical approach in interpreting their transoceanic cultural expressions. It proposes a new metaphor for the Sikh diaspora-pearls from the seven seas-to articulate the global dispersal of Sikhs around the world, as well as the historical moments and places in which individuals strung together necklaces of local and global communities through song. Finally, it likens women's resilience to individual pearls that reflect the process by which women transformed hardships into objects of beauty through listening to, singing, and composing songs.