Mahadai Das

Mahadai Das was a Guyanese poet. During 1954. she was born in Eccles, Guyana. She died in Barbados in 2003. Das attended the University of Guyana and Columbia University.

She was a beauty queen (Ms. Dewali, 1971). She was one of the first Indo-Caribbean women to be published. Her poetry explicitly relates to ethnic identity, something which contrasts her with other female Indo Caribbean poets. Another theme in her writing is the working conditions in the Caribbean islands. Das's A Leaf in His Ear was included in an article on "10 Female Caribbean Authors You Should Know". One of Das's last published work of poetry was named "bones" and was published in 1988 by the Peepal Press of London.

Guyana faced big social and political problems dealing with corrupt and unfair laws and government. Das tried to find ways to solve these issues and was a part of the Working People's Alliance whose goal, like Das's, was to find resolutions to the number of problems Guyana faced on a daily basis regarding politics and social issues.

Das died April 3, 2003, in Barbados, from an illness relating to cardiac arrest which was suffered 10 days before her death.

There are a few reoccurring themes in many of Das's writings including the very poor and unfair working conditions that many Caribbean people sadly have to endure for their entire life. In addition to poor working conditions, another reoccurring themes in Das's writings have to do with is ethnic identity and people finding who they really are and coming to terms with who they are despite all the negativity coming from outside Europeans. These themes, although reoccurring in Das's many writings and poems, also tend to be the theme of a majority of Caribbean authors.

Several of her poems were included in The Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry (Heinemann, 1992).