“This is a brave, important, and engaging work that breaks new ground while beautifully honoring intellectual and aesthetic traditions. Lyndon K. Gill's scholarship pushes well beyond the current boundaries of anthropology—exploring how erotic subjectivity shapes our expanding cartography of the queer Caribbean, at the cutting edge of black studies, queer studies, and diaspora studies.” - Jafari S. Allen, author of ¡Venceremos? The Erotics of Black Self-Making in Cuba
“Bringing together anthropologically inflected inquiry and insightful engagement with contemporary theoretical debates in queer theory, art history, and in race, diaspora, and gender studies, Lyndon K. Gill makes an extremely important contribution to our understanding of the contemporary Caribbean. Gill's reading of this space is informed by both a knowing intimacy of the region and critical engagement with a wider body of scholarship in ways that move local knowledge and broader theoretical debates in new directions.” - Rinaldo Walcott, author of Queer Returns: Essays on Multiculturalism, Diaspora, and Black Studies
"Highly recommended." - E. Pappas, Choice
"Part history and part ethnography, Lyndon K. Gill’s Erotic Islands offers an innovative approach to nascent and long-established fields such as black diaspora studies and anthropology, correspondingly. Scholars of Caribbean studies or queer studies will likewise benefit from Erotic Islands." - Alejandro Stephano Escalante, ASAP/Journal
"It is through the book’s formal weaving together of the three case studies, their histories, and Gill’s own diaristic reflections in the field. . . that Erotic Islands carries forward its promise of unveiling a new erotic." - João Florêncio, CAA Reviews
"Reading Erotic Islands is a sensual exercise. The chapters, organized based on the senses, visual, aural and tactile engagement in art and activism, are punctuated by excerpts from Gill’s field diaries, also rich with sensory descriptions. . . . The text successfully engages the reader on multiple levels. Erotic Islands provides rich and provocative explorations of same-sex desire and instructions for applying the erotic lens, while making invaluable contribution to deeper understandings of the queer Caribbean." - Krystal Nandini Ghisyawan, Anthropos
“I celebrate this book for resisting dominant imaginings of paradise and refuting the idea that the region is unlivable for same-sex-desiring persons. This work takes seriously the spaces of our Queer Caribbean lives with caring analysis.”
- Angelique V. Nixon,
GLQ
“Some ethnographers are griots who rely on ethnography to reveal certain truths about the world. Lyndon Gill is one such scholar. Attentive to the transformative power of language, story-telling, and multiple registers of world-making, he reveals the power of ‘eros as a lens, vital for surveying the elaborate topography of connections we share as political, sensual, and spiritual beings’ (p. 11).” - Ana-Maurine Lara, Asian Journal of Social Science
“Erotic Islands is a thought-provoking text that offers integral concepts to queer, diaspora, Black, and Caribbean studies. It is a pivotal tool that excavates the dynamism of queer Caribbean efforts toward recognition, safety, and autonomy.” - Sabia McCoy-Torres, Transforming Anthropology
“Erotic Islands makes a timely and much-needed contribution to discourses on queer Caribbean sexualities and provides concrete examples of the creative ways that queerness becomes agential within often-limiting contexts.” - Nikoli Attai, Island Studies Journal
