Faith Smith

FAITH SMITH is Associate Professor at Brandeis University, where she chairs the Department of African and Afro-American Studies, and is a member of the Department of English and American Literature, and the Programs in Latin America and Latino Studies and Women's and Gender Studies.
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>Faith Smith

FAITH SMITH is Associate Professor at Brandeis University, where she chairs the Department of African and Afro-American Studies, and is a member of the Department of English and American Literature, and the Programs in Latin America and Latino Studies and Women's and Gender Studies.

FAITH SMITH is Associate Professor in the Department of African and African American Studies and the Department of English, Brandeis University, Massachusetts.

"[They're] writers from the region who may not themselves be lesbian and gay," explains Faith Smith, an associate professor at Brandeis University who often teaches courses on Caribbean literature, "but who have been forcing us for quite a while to not pretend that Caribbean identity and homosexual identity are two separate boxes."

These authors often pick their battles far from their birthplaces -- in Boston, Toronto, London, or Santa Cruz, Calif.They do, after all, come from a region where homophobia rears its heads in many aspects of society.You can hear rumbles of it, Smith says, in dancehall reggae songs that casually chant "chi chi man for dead " -- slang for "all gay men should die."
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Smith, who's also from Jamaica, believes the Caribbean's homophobia is caused not only by its religious beliefs but by its colonial origins as well: "Unfortunately sexuality now becomes the way we in the Caribbean have the right to say who and what we are."

There's a perception among some Caribbean people, says Smith, that homosexuality is foreign to the islands."[It] comes from the outside," she says, "whether it is from evil white people or diasporic Caribbean people who have migrated and have become infected by this evil thing."

It's a direct reaction, says Smith, to the Caribbean's European conquerors who categorized black and brown bodies as impure and overtly sexual.Upon gaining their freedom, Caribbean people yearned to prove that wasn't so."It became imperative to say `Look, we are clean,' `Look, we are normal,' " she says, "because for such a long time the mythology of savagery was attached to us."

Panel Chair: Dr Faith Smith, Brandeis University

By Kristin L. Matthews, Deirdre Egan, Dennis Britton, Alladi Uma, Dave Junker, Eric Darnell Pritchard, Shanna Greene Benjamin, Keisha Watson Bowman, Katherine Mellen Charron, Kimberly Blockett, Alicia Kent, Lydia Melvin, Gregory Rutledge, Marilyn Sanders Mobley, David Ikard, Laura J. Veltman, Lynn Jennings, Faith Smith, Cherene Sherrard-Johnson and Mary Jo Bona, Assistant Professor of English, Pennsylvania State University-Delaware Co. (2006)
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By Faith Smith, Associate Professor of English & American Literature and Chair of African & Afro-American Studies, Brandeis University (2006)

Faith Smith

Associate Professor andChair of African and Afro-American Studies, Brandeis University