The Queer Caribbean Speaks

In most Caribbean countries homosexuality is still illegal and many outside of the region are unaware of how difficult life can be for gay men and lesbians. This book collects interviews with queer Caribbean writers, activists, and citizens and challenges the dominance of Euro-American theories in understanding global queerness.

“The Queer Caribbean Speaks: Interviews with Writers, Artists, and Activists … offer a comprehensive, interdisciplinary perspective on the representations and behind-the-scenes motivations of contemporary Pan-Caribbean cultural workers. … The Queer Caribbean Speaks is a valuable addition to queer Caribbean studies. … offer a deep understanding of the sociohistorical realities of the Caribbean, with detailed accounts of colonial and recent histories, legal codes, the effects of tourism, and pop culture phenomena.” (Patricia K. DeRocher, SX Salon_smallaxe.net, February, 2016)

"The rich reflections and testimonies of experience recorded in this book break the silence about queer Caribbean lifeworlds, imagined and configured through the confluence of local, national, regional, and transnational processes. The collection compels us to meaningfully reconceptualize both Caribbeanness and queerness as categories of meaning that articulate and unravel each other. As such, this book holds many possibilities for engaging what might be considered the queer turn in Caribbean Studies and for productively troubling the conceptual limits of 'Q'ueer Studies." - Amar Wahab, Assistant Professor in Gender and Sexuality, York University, Canada

"This timely collection of 14 interviews offers further momentum to current commitments to expand the horizon of possibilities for how we think, live, love and desire in the Caribbean. The queer Caribbean that speaks here includes writers, activists, a lawyer, a reggae artist and several teachers whose reflections on homophobia in the region are at once painful and powerfully moving to read. Campbell's questions generate remarkably open and generous responses, many of them threaded through with a yearning to feel - and be - at home within family and the Caribbean. The interview format results in wonderfully eclectic and fragmented personal insights, shaped by the very particular politics of location of each interviewee and intimately inflected by the distinct tenor of each voice. Gathered together, these accounts offer an affecting and powerfully articulate refusal of the hyper-hetero contours of contemporary Caribbean culture." - Denise deCaires Narain, Senior Lecturer in English, University of Sussex, UK

"Kofi Campbell's collection of interviews is a compelling read for anyone interested in what queerness, same sex loving and sexual diversity might have in common with Caribbeanness in spite of the realities of homophobia and criminalisation in the region. A wonderful companion to the many contemporary Caribbean literary voices representing diverse sexualities and to an emergent and impressive stirring of critical interest in this field, this collection congregates reflections on the body, spirituality, ethnicity and family reflecting how differently known sexual differences can significantly enrich our understandings of Caribbean subjects." - Alison Donnell, Professor of Modern Literatures in English, University of Reading UK, and author of Twentieth Century Caribbean Literature: Critical Moments in Anglophone Literary History

"The interviews in this collection reveal the complexity of lived experiences for LGBTQ Caribbean people in the Anglophone Caribbean and diaspora. These writers, artists, and activists push hard against the limitations of gender and cultural norms to remind us that defining ourselves for ourselves is vital. Their stories offer compelling inquiries into the ways we discuss LGBTQ rights and identities in the region and outside. Their stories challenge singular views of the Caribbean and offer multiple ways of understanding Caribbean sexualities. Overall, this collection reveals the myriad ways Caribbean LGBTQ people identify, resist, and demand space for our bodies and our stories." - Angelique V. Nixon, Ph.D., and Co-editor of Theorizing Homophobias in the Caribbean: Complexities of Place, Desire, and Belonging

Kofi Campbell is Associate Professor of English, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts, and a member of the graduate program in Cultural Analysis and Social Theory at Laurier Brantford University, Canada. He is the author of Literature and Culture in the Black Atlantic: From Pre- to Postcolonial and has published several articles on postcolonial and medieval literatures.