Jahajee: a queer feminist history of Indo-Caribbean activism in New York City

This article traces a public history of queer feminist activism through the Indo-Caribbean organization Jahajee, formerly known as Jahajee Sisters. As the first organization in the U.S. committed to ending gender-based violence in Indo-Caribbean communities, the intergenerational activism of Jahajee has included queer and lesbian women from its founding nearly two decades ago. In this article, I demonstrate that queer feminist Indo-Caribbean activists within immigrant communities in New York City have chosen a politics of organizing around the single issue of ending gender-based violence-rather than advocating for the issues of mainstream U.S.-based LGBT politics. Mapping oral histories of the lives and experiences of queer Indo-Caribbean women, this article documents a visible history of queer feminist activism that endures as forms of kinship and survival against a history of erasure and interenerational legacies of violence.