Erotic Islands: Art and Activism in the Queer Caribbean by Lyndon K. Gill

Abstract

Reviewed by: Erotic Islands: Art and Activism in the Queer Caribbean by Lyndon K. Gill Gabby M.H. Yearwood Lyndon K. Gill, Erotic Islands: Art and Activism in the Queer Caribbean. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018. 267 pp. Lyndon Gill’s Erotic Islands is an exploration of Black Queer life in Trinidad and Tobago detailing the impact of HIV/AIDS within a community of Black gay men and the social and political responses to the epidemic. Gill’s conceptual and epistemological work centers Black Queer and Black Feminist theories and anthropological methodologies to demonstrate the impact of race, sexuality, and politics on the social productions of carnival, calypso, and grassroots mobilizations. Gill accomplishes this by organizing the text around three main subjects: the life of Peter Minshall, a Trinidadian Carnival designer; calypso singer Calypso Rose; and Friends for Life (FFL), an HIV/AIDS intervention organization. These three sections are intermixed with “Interludes,” insights into Gill’s personal yet deeply theoretical challenges to anthropological conventions. This ethnography brings into relief anthropological preoccupations with ethnography; the role, impact, and power of researchers; and the ethical, intimate, and political involvement of anthropologists in the field. Gill, unabashedly and courageously, shows his limitations, strengths, and weaknesses not merely as a researcher but as a person in the field. Gill’s self-identification as a Black Queer man examining Black Queer life in Trinidad and Tobago allows for opportunities to discuss how theory and praxis intermix within ethnographic methodology. The opening preface, “A Port of Entry,” introduces the framework Gill plans to develop for his project. The Caribbean is depicted as the original Garden of Eden, establishing the desire for both space and bodies that historically motivated European engagement with the region. Situated [End Page 1301] alongside other scholarship of the region, Erotic Islands informs us of how these motivations continue into the present while also demonstrating how the Caribbean as a site of Western desire may be understood differently when centrally grounded within Black Queer/Feminist epistemology. Gill describes Trinidad and Tobago as a twin island nation with Arawak, African, French, Spanish, South Asian, and English heritage combining to shape the contemporary space and place. Gill foregrounds and weaves these elemental components throughout to demonstrate their importance to the reader. Gill introduces us to the queerness of Trinidad and Tobago through the folkloric symbol of the soucouyant. A reworking of the soucouyant, traditionally depicted as a witch who sheds her skin at night and feeds on the blood of her primarily male victims, demonstrates that the queerness of Trinidad and Tobago has always been there and serves as a legitimizing motif which frames his analysis. To decenter older readings of the soucouyant as dangerous and threatening, Gill connects the figure to the region through motifs of blood and spirituality, themes Gill uses later in the ethnography to discuss HIV/AIDS and local responses to the disease. The figure of the soucouyant allows for a blurring of the overly determined heterosexist research and evaluations of the region by early scholars. Rather than establishing the importance within queer research projects of the hurt done to queer subjectivities, the introduction, “A Queer Cartography of Desire,” instead focuses on the triumphs and successes made possible through Trinidadian Carnival, the music of Calypso, and HIV/AIDS intervention programs. With a heavy grounding in Black Feminist and Black Queer theories, the erotic is a central component to the entire work. The erotic serves to structure every facet of the ethnography from methodology and epistemological frameworks to anthropological analysis. Gill draws his usage of the erotic from Lorde, detailing that a negation of the sensual, physical, and emotional, limits the possibilities of the motivations for politics and love. Gill, as both person and researcher, becomes an integral component that draws the reader into an understanding of queer life in Trinidad and Tobago not possible without the erotic as the guiding force. This allows for a potential reworking, re-reading, and destabilizing of ethnography and sanctions Gill’s corporeal body as an interpretive tool and diagnostic instrument. Building from this groundwork we are directed, through Gill’s body, to the use of Kant’s aesthetic principle of sensory experience. These sensory...