Island Bodies: Transgressive Sexualities in the Caribbean Imagination

3. “This Is You”: “Invisibility,” Community, and Women Who Desire Women

3 “This Is You” “Invisibility,” Community, and Women Who Desire Women The issue of revelation discussed in the previous chapter as being dominant in the experiences of Caribbean men who desire other men does exist for Caribbean women, but it is not the dominant trope for them. Similarly, the issue of supposed invisibility can be applicable to Caribbean men who desire men, but it is not the dominant trope for their experiences or representation . If Caribbean men who desire other men are punished less for their desire than for the gender nonconformity that is considered its visual manifestation, then Caribbean women who desire other women are erased—made invisible—when their desire and gender expression can be absorbed by prevailing norms. When they can neither be erased nor absorbed , they are punished for daring not to desire men. This chapter deconstructs the supposed invisibility of Caribbean women who desire women, and explores how their portrayal in the region’s literature mirrors strategies pursued by Caribbean organizations created by and serving this same population. The main objective of this chapter is threefold: First, to deconstruct the myth of the invisible Caribbean lesbian found throughout the region and its diaspora; Second, to demonstrate, through key literary texts by Dionne Brand (set in Trinidad), by Shani Mootoo (set in Toronto), by R. Gay (set in Haiti), and by Marilyn Bobes (set in Cuba), how invisibility functions, specifically that it is less a passive absence than it is an active, enforced disappearing; And third, to reveal how Caribbean women involved inGrupoOREMI(Cuba)and theWomen’sCaucus(TrinidadandTobago) 93 94 · I s l a n d B o d i e s use activism to battle their isolation and their invisibility, at least to each other, and how these groups, along with the multigender and ally organizations Hombres por la Diversidad (Cuba), the Coalition Advocating for Inclusion of Sexual Orientation (Trinidad and Tobago), and Overlegorgaan Caribische Nederlanders (the Netherlands) in the Caribbean and its diaspora, engage political approaches that reject more separatist strategies popular in the global North. Throughout, it will be clear that, in addition to supporting each other, these women desire to be full and largely unremarkable members of their communities. However, before the argument unfolds, we must consider terminology. Throughout this chapter, the descriptive and less culturally weighted term women who desire women will appear more often than lesbian, although sometimesthelatterword willbeused.Some,butnotallCaribbeanwomen who have erotic, romantic, and/or sexual relationships with women identify with the term lesbian, as can be seen in several quotations used later in this chapter. As within many communities of people of color in the United States, some people in the Caribbean explicitly identify the term lesbian with white North American and European women, while others use local nonderogatory or reclaimed terms such as zami, mati, buenas amigas, entendida , kambrada,and variouseuphemismssuchas“so,”“funny,”or“goeswith women,” and still others refuse to label their sexuality at all. Furthermore, thediversityofindividualsexualitiesmeansthatwomenwhoaremarriedto or have sex with men and have sex with other women, women who have sex withotherwomenbutprofessnottofallinlovewiththem,andwomenwho only engage in particular sex acts with women may not label themselves lesbians or as anything other than heterosexual. Here, when the term lesbian is used, it is used consciously and to refer to people who have identified themselves with that word.1 It is important to note that this issue is not “just” one of word choice. The lived experiences of nonheteronormative sexualities are often different in different places. And, in fact, it is because terms represent lived experiences in particular cultural, geographical, chronological, and social spaces that they make sense to us at all. To use a term in an inappropriate context is to erase the specificity of that context and the agency of the individual, and to superimpose assumptions on them about what it means to inhabit their identity.2 Trinidadian Dionne Brand, winner of Canada’s prestigious Governor General’sAward(1997and2006),amongmanyotherhonors,haspublished “Invisibility,” Community, and Women Who Desire Women · 95 ten collections of poetry, three novels, one short story collection, and two books of original essays. Her prolific publishing record and the breadth of topics, including race, sexuality, immigration, and memory, that Brand’s oeuvre addresses make her one of the most important living Caribbean womenwritersand oneofanevensmallergroupofnotableCaribbeanwriters who identify as lesbian. Brand’s poem “Hard against the Soul,” which was first published in 1990 in her important collection No Language Is Neutral ,remainsradicaltodaybecauseitholdsupamirrortotheCaribbeanand names...