Queeribbean

In the final episode of Season 3, Hema and Shaharah Gaznabbi, a Toronto-based Indo-Caribbean theatre creator and drag performer, talk about the history, language, and cultural nuances of being queer in the Caribbean diaspora, how colonization has shaped attitudes towards queeribbean folks, and the evolving acceptance within communities and families.

Shaharah shares their personal coming out experience, their role as the Chair of the Indo-Caribbean Canadian Association’s group EPIC (Equality and Pride for Indo-Caribbeans), and provides some insight into acceptable language in the LGBTQ+ community and relclaiming the term ‘queer’.

About Shaharah: Shaharah "Gaz" Gaznabbi (They/Them) is an ACTRA & Equity Actor, Playwright, Puppeteer, Comedian, Deviser, Dramaturg, Drag Artist, (you name it!) based in Toronto.

They were an Artist-In-Residence at Tarragon Theatre as a recipient of the Ellen Ross Stuart Award, and was part of Tarragon Theatre’s Young Playwrights Unit. Shaharah received The Neurodiverse Review's Birds of Paradise Emerging Talent Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2023, where they presented their solo-show "What Can Indian Look Like? Can It Look Caribbean?". They have also received TO Live’s “Best of Fringe”, as well as the Canadian Green Alliance’s “Greenest In The Fringe” at the Toronto Fringe Festival 2025 for their solo puppet filled musical comedy “My Pet Lizard, Liz: The Shakespearean Existential Crisis that Led to his Ultimate Demise”. They additionally received the inaugural Gerda Hynatyshyn Launch Grant for English Theatre.

Recent Credits: Noor in Season 3 of CBC's run The Burbs, Ontario and US tour of "Jungle book" Directed by Rick Miller & Craig Francis, 4 city tour of “Quest for The Moon, and 5 city tour of “Old Man and the River” both with WeeFestival.

Instagram

Shaharah's current work:

BrOWN//Out Stage at Toronto Pride 2026

Go-Between Girl (Audiobook Narration) by Andrea Gunraj

Belly Button at Toronto Fringe 2026

Cheers! The ORDA Podcast

Indo-Caribbean Canadian Association

Resources

Wotless info and tickets

An Ordinary Landscape of Violence by Preity R. Kumar

Guy Anabella

377: The British colonial law that left an anti-LGBTQ legacy in Asia

Episodes referenced

Indo-Caribbean Canadian Culture & Community with Ryan Singh

The role of the British Royals in the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Dr. Brooke N. Newman discusses her book The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas in which she explores the British monarchy's involvement in slavery and the transatlantic slave trade.

Spanning hundreds of years and drawing on thousands of pages of archival records, the book starts with Queen Elizabeth I, the first British monarch to knowingly invest in and profit from the transatlantic slave trade and brings us all the way to present day. In this episode, Brooke shares her thoughts on the actions that the Crown, King Charles, and the British government can take to acknowledge this history and respond to the call for reparations.

About Brooke N. Newman

Dr. Brooke Newman is an Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She specializes in the history of early modern Britain and the British Atlantic, with a focus on slavery and its legacies. She is the author of the award-winning book, A Dark Inheritance: Blood, Race, and Sex in Colonial Jamaica (Yale, 2018) and The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas (Mariner, 2026). Her writing and research have been featured in the Guardian, the Washington Post, Der Spiegel, and Smithsonian Magazine, and she has served as a historical expert for HBO's Last Week Tonight, Vox, the BBC, and NPR, among others.

Website

Instagram

Bluesky

Resources

The Royal Archives

Georgian Papers Programme

The Spirit of Laws

Slave Voyages database

The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery,, Michael Taylor

Padraic X. Scanlan

The Whiteness of Wealth, Dorothy Brown

Episodes Referenced

Slave Voyages: Documenting the Transatlantic Slave Trade

The Repair Campaign: Caribbean Reparations Explained

Exploring Caribbean migration experiences and barrel children through short stories

In this episode, Hema talks to Chanel Sutherland about her first book, Layaway Child, a collection of short stories exploring the Caribbean immigrant experience.

Chanel shares her personal journey of being a ‘layaway child’ (often called barrel children), growing up in St. Vincent and the Grenadines with her grandparents while her mother migrated to Montreal, Quebec (Canada) to set up a new life for her family, and travelling with her younger sister to reunite with their mother.

The discussion delves into the themes of sacrifice, resilience, and the impact of colonial legacies, and the emotional complexities of family relationships once children migrate to reunite with their parents in a new country.

Chanel weaves her own experiences into this collection of short stories, as well as those of people she has met. From colourism to the cultural silence in Caribbean families and seeming lack of emotion, to the importance of community and empathy in understanding the immigrant experience, she encourages open dialogue about the emotional toll of migration.

Chanel Sutherland

Born in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Chanel Sutherland moved to Montreal, Quebec (Canada) when she was ten years old. She holds a BA in English Literature from Concordia University. Her first book, Layaway Child, is a collection of short stories exploring the Caribbean immigrant experience, especially those dealing with girlhood.

She is the winner of the 2025 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize, and the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize.

In addition, she was awarded the 2022 Mariruth Sarsfield Mentorship, longlisted for the 2022 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and shortlisted for the Max Margles Fiction Prize. Chanel was also included on the CBC Books 30 Writers to Watch list for 2022.

Website

Instagram

Facebook

Layaway Child is a luminous debut short story collection by award-winning writer Chanel Sutherland that explores the emotional landscapes of Caribbean families fractured by migration, especially the harrowing yet resilient journeys of Black girls and women. In lyrical, linked stories, Sutherland traces the lives of mothers working abroad as housekeepers and nannies, and the children they left behind.

From lush island childhoods marked by absence and community to the cold, alienating spaces of Canadian cities, Layaway Child captures the complexity of growing up between worlds. A mother, newly arrived in Montreal, is kept from speaking to her daughters by her own mother’s misguided attempt to help her let go of home. A schoolgirl becomes a spectacle under the gaze of white classmates. A young girl’s curiosity about the cosmos collides with the confusion of puberty. Sutherland brings deep compassion and sharp insight to each moment, revealing both the beauty of island life and the harshness of immigration’s toll.

In this episode Hema chats with Rawlston Williams, author of The Caribbean Cookbook, graduate of the French Culinary Institute, and he was the chef-owner of the award-winning Brooklyn restaurant The Food Sermon. He shares stories from his childhood growing up in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, where his connection to food began. From cooking in the kitchen of his aunt Gloria to helping the neighbour handmake chocolate from cacao growing in her yard, and learning how to churn butter before moving to the United States to join his family.

Rawlston shares a behind-the-sceens look at developing the cookbook and discusses how Caribbean food is rooted in scarcity, culture, and resourcefulness. This episode is a great companion piece to his debut cookbook from Phaidon, The Caribbean Cookbook.

Connect with Rawlston Williams

Rawlston Williams is a Caribbean chef with a deep passion and knowledge for his region’s food culture. Born in Kingstown in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, he has lived in New York since 1987. A graduate of the French Culinary Institute, for many years he was the chef-owner of the award-winning Brooklyn restaurant The Food Sermon, which focused on dishes inspired by Caribbean cuisine.

Instagram I Am Rawlston and The Food Sermon

The Caribbean Cookbook is an exploration of Caribbean cuisine and culinary history, featuring more than 380 authentic home cooking recipes from across the region.

Rawlston Williams, with photographs by Nico Schinco

Book Tour events

Resources

Yan Can Cook

The History of Doubles: Trinidad's Iconic Street Food

Doubles is the quintessential Trinidadian street food, and often the dish that people most associate with Trinidad. In this episode, Hema chats with Vinay Harrichan, founder of The Cutlass Magazine, to talk about the origins of doubles, local lore and stories behind the dish, variations, and they each share their doubles order. It turns out that Hema’s order is what Vinay would describe as starter doubles, or what you would order for a small child!

Vinay shares the etymology of bara and channa, and talks a bit about Bhojpuri and Hindustani words that have become part of the everyday language in Trinidad.

About Vinay Harrichan

Vinay Harrichan is the founder and curator of The Cutlass Magazine. Founded in August of 2020, it is a social media platform dedicated to the Indo-Caribbean community and descendants of Indian indentureship. TCM covers topics such as history, religion, politics, music, dance, and linguistics in the name of cultural preservation. You may follow The Cutlass Magazine (@cutlassmagazine) on Instagram, Facebook, X/Twitter, Threads, and TikTok.

https://linktr.ee/cutlassmagazine

Resources

Book: Out of the Doubles Kitchen by Badru Deen

Movie: Doubles with Slight Pepper - Ian Harnarine

Doubles Movie

NYT Cooking Doubles

This is Doubles IG

Recipes

Trini Cooking with Natasha - Doubles Masterclass

Taste of Trinbago with Reshmi

Cooking with Ria - Doubles Recipe

Episodes Referenced

Tobago History with Devonne Adanna

Exploring the US Virgin Islands: History, Identity, and Cultural Shifts

Stephanie Chalana Brown joined me to discuss the history of the Virgin Islands, a territory of the United States. Comprised of St. Thomas, St. Croix, St. John plus smaller islets and cays, it’s often described as laid-back, with quaint towns, turquoise waters, a perfect vacation spot for sailing, divers, and sun-seekers.

In this episode we go beyond that. From its indigenous Taino roots, colonial past with strong Danish influences, and present-day struggles, Chalana shares her personal insights into citizenship issues, her ancestral family history, and the importance of local scholarship, digital archives, and historical narratives.

About Stephanie Chalana Brown

Stephanie Chalana Brown is a Virgin Islands–based photographer, cultural thinker, and public intellectual whose work explores African diasporic history, place, and memory across the Caribbean.

Her practice moves between photography, archival inquiry, and cultural interpretation. She documents everyday life, heritage spaces, and community rituals with an eye toward how history lives in bodies, streets, buildings, and shared traditions. Her work treats culture as a living record, something carried, practiced, and remembered rather than frozen in the past.

Chalana’s interests sit at the intersection of African studies, Caribbean history, visual literacy, and public education. She is particularly engaged in how communities preserve memory outside of formal institutions, and how photography can function as both documentation and archive.

Her work has appeared in exhibitions, publications, and national media, and she regularly contributes to conversations about heritage, representation, and cultural accountability in the Virgin Islands and the wider Black Atlantic world.

She lives and works in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where she continues to photograph, research, and write in dialogue with place.

Instagram

These islands were bought by the US. Now they have a message for Greenland.

Resources

Virgin Islands Taino Welcome Tribal Members from Caribbean

The Danish National Archives

National Museum of Denmark

Society of Virgin Islands Historians

The 1733 Akwamu Insurrection

Fireburn: The Uprising of 1878

The Fireburn Files

The St. Croix Educational Complex Drama Club

Many foods come to mind when people think of Jamaica, and one most often associated with Jamaican cuisine is jerk chicken. In this episode Hema is joined by Alyssa Sperry Bertrand, a retired pastry chef turned academic and historian, to discuss the evolution of jerk, from traditional methods to modern interpretations. They explore the origins as a food preservation method, the influence of the Taino people, Maroons and African cultures, and pimento wood, the one must have for authentic jerk.

Listen as we dive into the history and cultural significance of jerk in Jamaican cuisine, the must-have spices in its modern flavour profile, and the global influence of the dish.

Episodes Referenced

Caribbean Foodways with Dr. Candice Goucher

The connection between salt and spirituality with Alyssa Bertrand (Sperry)

Exploring Caribbean Heritage through food with Marie Mitchell

Belly Full Cookbook, Caribbean Food & Ingredients with Lesley Enston

Caribbean Culinary History with Keshia Sakarah

Resources and Links

Friends of Jamaica https://servejamaica.org/

Eating Jamaica: How Food is Used as a Tool to Create and Reinforce Cultural Identity

What is moreish? | more·​ish ˈmōrish | informal, of food, causing a desire for more

Join us onTikTok,Instagram andYouTube to continue the conversation. Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!)https://uppbeat.io/t/andrey-rossi/jerk-sauce

Alyssa Bertrand (Sperry) is a leading expert on salt, and its relationship to Jamaican culture(s). As a former chef, and historical ethnographer she provides insight into the role salt played in the development of culture and identities among the Maroons and Rastafarians by understanding salt’s role during the Atlantic Slave Trade and how it shaped the cultural identities of the past and present. Alyssa received her master’s degree at the Department of Global Studies at the University of Oregon and her bachelor’s degree at Washington State University in Anthropology and History. Alyssa has received numerous awards and grants for her research including the Oregon International Research Grant, Folger Shakespeare Library Scholarship, and Library Research Excellence Award at Washington State University.

How salt shaped Jamaica’s culture and subcultures

Hema is joined by Alyssa Bertrand Sperry, a retired pastry chef turned academic and historian, about her research on the historical and cultural significance of salt in Jamaica. Starting with the colonial era and the Spanish followed by the British, they explore the transition of Jamaica from a salt-producing island to a sugar-centric economy, the role of women in salt production, and the spiritual and practical implications of salt in the lives of Jamaican Maroon and Rastafarian communities.

Alyssa shares how she got the nickname ‘Salt Woman’ and the amusing quest to find an out-of-the-way salt pond in Jamaica, complete with rum and a game of dominoes.

Alyssa talks about her research methodology and the importance of honouring the voices of the communities she studied. The conversation highlights the multifaceted nature of salt, its impact on culture, and the ongoing relevance in understanding Caribbean history.

About Alyssa Bertrand (Sperry)

Alyssa Bertrand (Sperry) is a leading expert on salt, and its relationship to Jamaican culture(s). As a former chef, and historical ethnographer she provides insight into the role salt played in the development of culture and identities among the Maroons and Rastafarians by understanding salt’s role during the Atlantic Slave Trade and how it shaped the cultural identities of the past and present.

Alyssa received her master’s degree at the Department of Global Studies at the University of Oregon and her bachelor’s degree at Washington State University in Anthropology and History. Alyssa has received numerous awards and grants for her research including the Oregon International Research Grant, Folger Shakespeare Library Scholarship, and Library Research Excellence Award at Washington State University. Alyssa is also a contributing writer to the books Salt in Eastern North America and the Caribbean (University of Alabama Press, 2021) and Women Who Changed the World (ABC-CLIO, 2021). She also published an article in the World History Connected, “Eating Jamaica: How Food is Used to as a Tool to Create and Reinforce Cultural Identity,” (Vol. 18, No.1, 2021). Currently,

Alyssa serves on the board of Friends of Jamaica, a non-profit organization, helping to raise funds and provide grants to community-based projects around the island of Jamaica.

Resources and Links

Remembering Jah Calo

William Berryman art

Episodes Referenced

Caribbean Foodways with Dr. Candice Goucher

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!) https://uppbeat.io/t/andrey-rossi/jerk-sauce