Journal of Eastern Caribbean Studies
Vol. 42, No. 3, December 2017 pp. 97–121
Let’s Liberate the Bullers!
Toronto Human Rights Activism and Implications for Caribbean Strategies
Nikoli Attai
University of Toronto, CANADA
Abstract
Caribbean queerness has gained increased attention by activists working in the Anglophone Caribbean. This is evidenced by a concerted effort engage publicly, a wide range of issues affecting queer people across the region. To this end, numerous advocacy groups have been formed in the region and in diaspora metropolitan cities in North America and Europe to address, among other things, the issue of criminalisation of homosexuality in Caribbean countries. This paper provides an overview of some of these recent human rights interventions, and also explores other popular campaigns in the region that focus on human rights for Caribbean queers.
Key Words: Human Rights, Queer Activism, Anglophone Caribbean, Canadian Homoimperialism
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Nikoli Attai is a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow in Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is currently working on his first book manuscript titled “Queer Liberation? Interrogating Human Rights Activism and the Queer Caribbean”, which interrogates the work being done by activists and non-governmental organizations in the Anglophone Caribbean and Toronto, Canada, and theorizes that current queer human rights interventions fail to adequately address the deeply complicated ways that queer people negotiate and resist homophobia, transphobia and discrimination in the region.
His research and teaching focus on transnational feminism, Black queer studies, transgender studies and transnational sexuality studies, with a particular focus on the Global South. He has taught classes on transnational sexualities and Caribbean women writers at the University of Toronto. Nikoli is currently working on several writing projects, which are scheduled for publication shortly.