"The more grown up Staceyann is tackling how do you deal with gay rights in a country like Jamaica. Do you rush in and treat it the same way that you treat it in a place like America that has a history of civil rights and activism and lobbying? How do I learn how to talk to Jamaicans? I’ve done the years of agitation and how do you take that agitation to actual conversations? The poor are in limbo under the pole of poverty. What I am going to do is introduce the queer community in that community. When it comes to the poorest of the poor what it comes down to is bread and butter. They are willing to have conversations and are willing to protect people who protect them in different ways. You can’t talk about gay rights in Jamaica when a black boy does not even have food and clothes. How the hell are you going to tell him to allow somebody to be gay, when he is not even being allowed to eat? Do we have a gay and lesbian organization here sponsor a food program and through that have a conversation that goes along with the food? And how do I make it so that it’s not exploitative, like “Ok we will feed you if you have the gay and lesbian conversation.”

Staceyann Chin, November 9th, 2004 (DC-Tampa)

That girl, that girl StaceyAnn. Who else would stand up, stand up in the front of a packed theater in Tampa not even a full week after the 2004 United States election and declare, “I want to be that voice that makes Bush so scared he hires two (butch) black bodyguards” and say it with a strong Jamaican accent? That would be the young, fiery poet who has taken spoken word by storm from slam competitions to the 2003 Tony Award winning Def Poetry Jam to HBO specials to one woman shows (UNSPEAKABLE THINGS and HANDS AFIRE) and documentary films. It's hard to decide what the most surprising thing is about Staceyann Chin, one of the original poets starring in Russell Simmons' 2004 Def Comedy Jam tour: the fact that she startles American audiences with her deep Jamaican accent or the way she proudly, unapologetically declares that she is a lesbian. The once science teacher, literature and philosophy major commands the stage with ease as audiences cheer to her revolutionary words, dancehall skills and lyrical delivery. Read on to find out about the fire within Staceyann Chin.

Jouvay.com: When your show opens DJ Reborn spins a track from Beenie Man’s newest CD Back to Basics. Outrage’s Stop the Murder Music campaign has targeted Beenie Man as a proponent of violence against gays and lesbians...

Staceyann Chin: And right now gays and lesbians are on the top of the roster again in terms of the Bush administration and how they feel about so many of the things that we have been working for over the past few decades. I'll get back to the question in a bit, but this is probably a bit more immediate on my head. We are in an interesting place because on the one hand you think, "Oh my God people have so much disdain for the LGBT lifestyle that so many voted against it" and then on the other hand it's like "these people have always been here, but they have never been motivated before because the kind of power has been on their side. We are on the eve." I think that the communities that have been unsupportive and viscous and unkind to a portion of society based on something that happens in the bedroom are aware that we are in a place of change and it's only a matter of time and I don’t think the gay and lesbian community of activists are at all disheartened. We feel heartened that we're in conversation and it’s a conversation that cannot be ignored. The fundamental Christian right that have been outside of the discussion have decided to insert themselves into the conversation because we are that close. I think it will happen in my lifetime. Back to the question about the Beenie Man. I am hard pressed to find any music that is popular that the artist is not tainted with homophobic lyrics or that the song is not homophobic or misogynistic. Alot of the hip hop songs that are alot of the rage are homophobic and misogynistic and racist in alot of ways really bad for us to listen to. The show is about presenting a range of voices in the mainstream through a conduit that was never used before. So, for them to play reggae music and hip hop music in a theater and to have a jam session before the players come out, that’s probably what Stan Lathan, the director is trying to do. I have grown so much over the last three years from when we first wrote the show and were on Broadway. I have grown to the place where I can quite frankly say that it is not everything on the stage I agree with, but therein lies the strength of the show. With my own politics I would not individually pull such a large group of people. What fills up that audience is the variety of voices. When I do my own show I would not necessarily put Beenie Man as an artist whose music I would promote. The director struggles with the balance of things. The notion of presenting the popular and then making it politically correct. I would not personally step out on stage to a Beenie man song, but I can’t necessarily tell the DJ how to do her job. Just like she can’t step in and say to me I can’t say this in a poem.

JC: I really enjoyed the different voices in the show. You would come out and do your thing and then right after Poetri would come out and speak about the transvestites...

SC: Even that poem, I would really love to spend some time breaking that poem down and seeing what it means. You're (Poetri) saying, "He tricked you being he’s this guy who looks so much like a woman that you are attracted to him." The more interesting argument would be to flip it on its back and say, "I might be attracted to transvestite men." It’s the same conversation we were having when we began. I think we are in conversation. There’s a Christian man writing a funny poem about being attracted to a transvestite. I remember when my use of the word "transvestite" in my I Believe poem was the only use of the word on stage, but now he comes out and he introduces the concept which is a whole other growth and movement. There are always problems with the discussion and that is why further discussion will always allow us to find clarity.

JC: How do you take this discussion to Jamaica?

Staceyann Chin: I have performed in Jamaica a couple of times to boos on stage to standing ovations to mini riots to cussing out people who were heckling me to a quiet audience. I've done the gauntlet and will do the continuum of audiences as long as there are people who want to hear me and there are people in Jamaica who want to hear me. I have an interview on the TV over the Christmas when I get home. The newspaper discusses every visit when I am home.

JC: I know the local newspaper has rightfully praised your shows and it references you as saying that you are speaking for the many Jamaican friends who are afraid to speak out about their sexuality, but you can since you are on a plane off the island in the morning. With this whole Stop The Murder Music campaign which I have been following given my involvement with party promotions, I find that there are just so many Jamaicans who seem to be in denial about how hard it is for gays and lesbians in Jamaica.

SC: I think Jamaicans have to begin to accept that they are people who are gay in their families, in their homes, children, mothers, fathers, sisters, cousins. If I had an American accent and came out and said, "I am a lesbian" people would be like, “hahahah, like Ellen.”
The concept of lesbian is not strange to anyone, especially outside of Jamaica. And really with cable being in Jamaica queerness is not a concept that is foreign. When I open my mouth people think “it’s great that she is Jamaican.” And then I come out and say lesbian and people are shocked. What shocks them? They conceptualize the lesbian as a woman who is not attractive and certainly not feminine. And I am feminine and I think in their minds an attractive girl. The level of surprise and shock brings up the argument that being Jamaican and lesbian are mutually exclusive states of being. It speaks to the homophobia that is embedded so deeply into the music. Even my own brother who lives in Austria who is developing and growing into this amazing creature, a couple of years ago he did not make the connection between the loud reggae music that he would play about killing sodomite and lesbians and think that somebody could hear that I am a lesbian and get inspired by it and could come and kill me. Now that he’s made the connection it’s an entirely different discussion.

Jouvay.com: I think alot of people (including Jamaica's Tourism Minister) are using that argument that these artists are just singing and not inspiring anybody to go out and kill anyone.

SC: Yeah, except that the likes of Bob Marley created a revolution in Jamaica. How do movements get started? Something as simple as “pon de river” or “signal the plane.” You get people to act on those things as easy as saying it. What makes them think that any other thing in the lyrics will not inspire them to action. It happens every single day. Nothing like that Trini music to give you directions. What makes them think that saying, “boom bye bye in a batty bwoy head” will not inspire somebody to put a gun to a homosexual man’s head and kill him? We signaling the plane, we pon de river we doing de donkey, five ten cent….oh no no people only listen to some things.

JC: It’s really sad because Trini music has a soca song out now that all of the bands seem to be singing and it says, “We don’t want no chi chi man in the dance.”

SC: It’s ridiculous. I want to point out to your readers how there is this subculture where there is a double level thing going on. There is what people say and then there is what people do and there is a crossover. There’s always a disconnect. Ten years ago when I was a young girl, just kind of hit twenty and I was still sleeping with men people would go out and be, “oh my God I don’t bow. No oral sex.” I would roll up in the bedroom and I would be like, “ok, so it’s just not an option for you not to.” By the end of the night everybody would be full course meal out. It’s so ridiculous. All of these men who have had homosexual experiences and more women who have had homosexual experiences and are willing to talk about it among their friends, but they won’t come out in public and say, “Yes, I participate in that lifestyle.” I also resent the idea that I am something different or strange.

Jouvay.com: At the end of the show you chant to a dancehall beat that sounds really good….

Staceyann Chin: It’s fun and it’s out of character. That piece is really a tribute to the voices who have come before us and have inspired us in different ways. Misogynistic as she is, but at the same time shocking and progressive and very powerful woman that she is I am always saying, “Ok I am going to do my Lady Saw routine right now.” She was one of the first women to come out and talk about her pussy and own her body in a kind of like, “oh, this dancehall music doesn't just make me object, I make something else object and I am the pointer.” That was very powerful for me. Before her the women in Jamaican reggae music were like soulful singing voices like Judy Mowatt and the I-threes. She’d come out and she’d have her hat turned sideways and be in her little skirts and I was like, “You do your thing woman.”

JC: I only saw her once and they had kids in the audience (Caribbean Sea Breeze, LA) and the promoter told her that she had to tone it down.

SC: Did she?

JC: She sure did.

Staceyann Chin: Isn’t that interesting though that they would never say to Beenie Man, “tone it down”, but they have said to her, “tone it down.” A woman who is standing straight up in her sexuality and saying, “my pussy is fabulous and therefore men should want it” or saying “I sleep with women” or “my body is my own” or “I masturbate” or any of those things that women do, the minute you are voicing your sexuality is the minute you become dangerous. The minute a man stops pushing his dick forward is the minute he becomes dangerous.

Jouvay.com: Or called a certain name. I think there is a void of women in positions of power in the entertainment field especially when it comes to dancehall music.

SC: Moving around in this industry men don’t know what to do with me because I am not available and I am not a girl that they can step to so they have to make conversation that is non sexual.

JC: Can they do that?

SC: Or when the conversation becomes sexual and they are “I like that girl” I would be like “Yeah she’s fine, but I like em a bit…” they have no idea what to do with me. I dress the way I dress and I like to be sensually displayed generally and it makes men have to take responsibility for themselves. You have to communicate with me and I am not dressed in a nun outfit?

JC: Alot of Caribbean men would take it as a challenge.

SC: Oh yes, but they could take it as a challenge all they want, but at the end of the night when you go home alone or when I don’t return your phone calls or tell you I am not interested, but really what I am interested in is your girl, so if you want to have a conversation have your girl call me. They see it as a challenge and dedicate their life to it or after a couple of weeks they give up. They don’t have any long attention span, you know that.

JC: You have a very active website with an extensive guest book of people saying just how much of an inspiration you are and a hope and a treat. You also keep a very up to date cyber journal through which it almost seems as though you have a community of people who are almost treating it as their own journal to process stuff. How much time do you spend managing this?

SC: I have a very good designer. It’s really easy. I click on a URL and I write my journal and I click publish. There’s a comment up there right now saying that I only keep positive comments. That’s not true, I keep everything up there. It’s good to give an honest reflection of what is happening because I don’t want people to think that we are further along in the struggle than we are which is why I am kind of happy that the votes went the way they did. Now there’s a strong sense that there is work ahead and that does not just include LGBT voices. We were at the top of the firing range, but right now and just as immediate as anything is the Arab American voice that is being silenced everyday. It’s the same thing about if the sodomy law should be taken off of the books in Jamaica. It’s strange because how do you tell a culture to run. Gay people are dying every day in Jamaica and I don’t see anyone invading. The more grown up Staceyann is tackling how do you deal with gay rights in a country like Jamaica. Do you rush in and treat it the same way that you treat it in a place like America that has a history of civil rights and activism and lobbying? How do I learn how to talk to Jamaicans? I’ve done the years of agitation and how do you take that agitation to actual conversations?

Jouvay.com: Which I think is something that Peter Thatchell them are dealing with right now. I have been back and forth on email with him because they are saying they want to open these conversations, but I was not sure what avenues or plans they had for doing that.

Staceyann Chin: Yeah, what would it take? I am going to start something with the Jamaican youth. The poor are in limbo under the pole of poverty. What I am going to do is introduce the queer community in that community in terms of having a bunch of queer women who collect clothing and money. When it comes to the poorest of the poor what it comes down to is bread and butter. They are willing to have conversations and are willing to protect people who protect them in different ways. You can’t talk about gay rights in Jamaica when a black boy does not even have food and clothes. How the hell are you going to tell him to allow somebody to be gay, when he is not even being allowed to eat? Do we have a gay and lesbian organization here sponsor a food program and through that have a conversation that goes along with the food? And how do I make it so that it’s not exploitative, like “Ok we will feed you if you have the gay and lesbian conversation.” And just to be fair to my own people because I have been away from them for eight years almost and in a lot of ways I am out of touch with the politics of the poor. I just don't want to roll in, especially since I know what it feels like to be the outside gay in America.

JC: What was UWI like?

SC: You spend three years there. My first year was idyllic. It was simply amazing. Students did not work and go to school so much because the government was still subsidizing education. Once you got into UWI it was very easy to move forward as an individual who was going to participate in the school system at the tertiary level. So when I went there we had hours and hours of conversations on philosophy, on Nietzsche and Jean Paul Sartre, and literature and we’d argue over poems. Lorna Goddings' and Derek Walcott’s work was on the tip of our toungues. We were doing Mutaburuka’s work, and we were looking at Sparrow’s work as literature. I remember with my best friends Brent and Anna we would spend hours lying about. It was rich with learning and ideas. It was almost as if I had got to a place where there was no prejudice. There was no prejudice because I belonged to a class of people, I was light skinned and I had had tertiary education before because I had gone to Sharpe Teacher's College so I participated at a level that was good. I fit in in alot of ways. The first time I noticed huge prejudice was when I discovered in a weird sort of way if one can say that one discovers that one likes women. I was a happy heterosexual. I was not unhappy. Men would tell me, "Oh that's because the people were not doing you right." That's not true, my boys did it just right and I was happy all day long. You can talk to my comrades from that time I was a penis praiser at the time. I was a strong contender for the penis for president. I kind of stumbled into the process of making love to a woman and thought, "Oh my God." I always thought I would go to Paris to see the Eiffel tower, but I never thought I would go to Paris having seen the tower.

JC: This happened in Jamaican?

SC: This happened in Jamaica and I was queer and out. I was a philosophy minor and a literature major so I was with these strange people who listened to strange music so it did not seem abnormal for me to say to the group of people I was hanging out with that “I like girls. I think this thing is worth exploring” and I explored it for a year and it was tumultuous and I lost alot of friends. It was obvious that it was okay to talk about ideas that were far and away, but when it influenced our lives then it was not ok. So I lost alot of friends and space and respect from people and I got tumbled around a little by a couple of boys in the bathroom. After that incident I realized that I could not live in Jamaica because it meant that I would have to live a lie or be in constant fear of danger for my life. I finished my degree and spent a lonely last year and waited to get on a plane and go to NY to the village to the Sodom and Gomorrah of the world.

Jouvay.com: You grew with your grandmother right?

Staceyann Chin: I spent the first nine years with my grandmother and after that I was bounced around to family members and boarding with different people that the school arranged for me.

JC: What was their reaction like?

SC: They always thought I was a little strange because I shaved my head and was outspoken. My family has always been a little bit removed because my mother left me when I was born. Then when I came out as a lesbian there was silence and they stopped talking to me largely. I was in the news and all over the place and now my family talks to me, but they never really mention queerness. I was saying to a cousin in Toronto that my lesbianism is like my individual best friend. My family just does not talk about it. And I have done well for myself and I help alot of family members in the Caribbean tradition. There are always the less opportune members of my family and I have helped out. You do alot cause you in foreign. That’s why I think that for the large masses in Jamaica, we as a community especially the LGBT away from home community, need to begin the conversation by acknowledging that the people inciting violence against gays and the gay people who are away that we have something in common which is not the fact that we are Jamaicans only, but you have an economic deficit and we have a kind of social deficit. We are going to to try and give voice and give help to your economic deficit and you will try to make space for our social deficit. It comes down to trading.

JC: That sounds brilliant. Keep me posted when you start that. So your mom and you have made up?

SC: I met her as an adult at twenty five. We have a tentative relationship. If you don’t have the first twenty five years it’s not going to be the same. She is the woman who gave birth to me and I have grown to respect her story and she has grown to respect mine, but we will never be the chummy mummy. I always have issues with abandonment.

An extra on safe sex: Listen to audio on phiva.net

SC: We don’t really talk about safe sex. The gay males might do anal sex which we don't do, but there is nothing else a lesbian does not do so the same things apply to us. Gloved hands to cover any nicks on your hands. Before you go down on somebody use a dental dam or don’t brush your teeth before you go down.

Jouvay.com: That (lesbian safe sex) is not even in the discourse on safe sex in the Caribbean.

Staceyann Chin: Like everybody not eating pussy down there, pardon my french. Like everybody. The men, you should hear their come on lines, “You like girls, I eat pussy you know.” Now it’s not a big public shame anymore. Hear the lines, “I’m not hairy, I’m really feminine.” All of a sudden they turn into gay men trying to get my attention.

Look out for the next yap session where we speak about love, being thirty, and the Chinese dad in the Caribbean household. Thanks much to Staceyann for this interview. Log on to her website for her poetry, cyber journal and schedule. If you have any questions please contact maya@jouvay.com.

Links

STACEYANNCHIN.COM

'No One Cared If I Kissed Girls', NY TIMES article by STACEYANN CHIN

Jamaica Gleaner review