"BARBADOS ." A CONVERSATION WITH DIVA ALEXANDER


 As Francoise Lionnet has asserted, the writings of Caribbean authors
such as Cliff enact "an unrelenting search for a different past, to be exhumed
from the rubble of patriarchal and racist obfuscations" (4). Oral narratives
facilitate the same representationn of the Caribbean subject by refocusing
the gaze from outsider to insider and by allowing for the reclamation of
narrative control. The following interview with Bajan transgendered
performer Diva Alexander de Beauvoir is a model for the reclamation of
narrative constructions through the act of self-representation. As Diva
explains, her public performance of female gender identification is both
revolutionary and resistant and, as such, is often experienced as extremely
threatening and dangerous. Significantly, at the time of this writing Diva is
also the only openly gay, transgendered calypsonian on the island, performing
with one of the most respected and popular tents on the island, Virgin
Atlantic. She writes her own material, and performs during Barbados' annual
carnival, Cropover. She conceives of herself as a trailblazer and freedom
fighter whose resistance to oppression has libratory possibilities not only
for her self, but also potentially for Barbados and the world. This interview
with her provides a window, or a doormouth, into an important and relatively
unexplored aspect of anglophone Caribbean cultures and presents revealing
insights regarding the intersections of performance, gender, identity,
nationalism, and culture. The interview that follows is Diva's frank, revealing,
and often wrenching account of her life.
 To begin our interview, I asked Diva questions about her family of origin
and her life experiences. These questions revealed a deep sense of pessimism
and an almost jeremiad-like sense of the decline of the Bajan social and moral
fabric.