Pelau MasQUEERade: Making Caribbean Queer Diasporic Space in the Toronto Pride Parade

Abstract

This essay focuses on the Caribbean cultural practices used by queer diasporic people to make space in the Toronto Queer Pride Parade. It locates the specific ways Trinidad Carnival traditions of resistance and vernacular are subverted and rearranged by Pelau MasQUEERade, a self‐identified Caribbean queer diasporic group comprised of Black queer and queer people of color. The author draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with Pelau MasQUEERade to illustrate how they create Caribbean queer diasporic space using a queer jouvay practice that consists of putting together different ingredients and components to queer and transform Trinidad Carnival for Pride. Pelau MasQUEERade enables new meanings and affiliations to be made by reaching out to Trinidad Carnival as part of its way of making Caribbean queer diasporic space in Canada.