![](https://sites.middlebury.edu/diasporicchildrenofindenture/files/2022/01/Drag-819x1024.png)
(links to episodes at the bottom)
For those who do not know, drag is a gender-based art form. It’s about performing gender as an art and form of entertainment and play. Dress up for grown ups you might say. I specifically say drag performer or drag artist to not assign a gender identity to the performer. There are drag queens, which is the performance of femininity. For example, a cisman may be a drag queen. Meanwhile drag kings are performers of masculinity and may often be ciswomen. However, there are many different styles of drag – camp drag, genderfuck, alien drag, etc. – and anyone of any gender, Two Spirit people, nonbinary people, transpeople, transmen, transwomen, cismen, ciswomen, etc. can perform drag. With that said, “drag queen” or “drag performer” does not imply trans identity and is not a synonym for trans women. There is the concept of crossdressing, but there is the difference of performance, art and entertainment, as opposed to affirming gender identity. And for some, there can be a discovery of self transness with performing drag being the first time to allow for gender discovery and gender experimentation. But again not all drag performers are trans and not all trans people are drag performers. Trans women that performed as a source of livelihood due to social stigmas and marginalization were referred to as “showgirls.” But that word can be very heavy and derogatory depending on the context. Not all trans performers use this word. Referring to a trans person as a drag queen if they are not a drag performer is very offensive and degrading. One has to understand that in the North American context, standardized drag (not theoretic) and performing gender in an entertainment setting comes from extreme marginalization and an era of trans- and queerphobic laws that criminalized crossdressing and queer intimacy, and degraded trans folx in limiting them in the public’s view to cismen and ciswomen with mental illness. In many former indenture sites where our families have come from, this remains a reality as our people recover from colonialism, its traumas and symptoms, such as the colonial era laws still in place. And these realities remain something influencing attitudes in diaspora as well.
Across the world there are indegenous, rich and diverse traditions of gender-based performances and cross dressing for the affirmation of identity and going beyond the gender binary, but also, and perhaps separately at times, for entertainment. Mainstream drag in North America, like what we see on RuPaul’s Drag Race, is shaped significantly by House-Ballroom culture, which were originally spaces for trans and queer Black and Brown people starting in big cities along the east coast, stretching from Atlanta to New York. I believe there were even Balls in Toronto. From Ballroom we have “10s, 10s, 10s across the board,” “it’s serving,” vogueing, the houses, the categories for competition, etc. and so much more–it is what is portrayed through the legendary and crucial series Pose. Ballroom was shaped by African Americans, Black folx from the Caribbean and Latine people. In indenture diaspora, one example of gender performance is londa ka naach, a dance form that travelled with our ancestors from Bihar (and nearby). Londa ka naach is celebrated amongst Sarnami Hindostani people in Suriname and the Netherlands, but it something extinct in Guyana. It is a dance form involving someone assigned male at birth – who may be trans or may be queer – who dances presenting female for weddings and other ceremonies. Perhaps we can consider londa ka naach as a form of drag today.
In diaspora, an array of indenture-descendant artists bring their own spin to the world of drag and other forms of gender-based performance like burlesque. Some may mould into the performance traditions in diaspora and others pay homage to rich traditions from soca music to Bollywood, our own version of lipsyncs and performance when you think of it. One influential artist is Priyanka, a Guyanese, Toronto-based drag artist; the winner of Canada’s Drag Race; and the first Indo-Caribbean and first contestant of South Asian ancestry to be part of the global franchise. Many Indo-indenture drag artists, like Fijian Sanjina and Guyanese Laila Gulabi, find themselves weaving their performances between racialized queer spaces like events run by the Caribbean Equality Project and South Asian ones like Toronto-based Rangeela and New York-based Yuva, making space for themselves, their artistry and other brown queer and trans folx who struggle to find space where their queerness and cultures do not conflict. Perhaps this is a common struggle of QTPOC. Despite the importance of racialized talent in Ballroom in the origins of mainstream drag, many trans and queer people of colour struggle with being perceived as too ethnic in queer spaces that are white-centric, and safe spaces to fully embody the multiple identities they hold are limited.
Tufts University professor Kareem Khubchandani (any pronoun), also known by their stage name Lahore Vagistan, documents the labour of drag and navigating queer Indian nightlife in their latest book Ishtyle, written from the perspective of the in-group. Commenting on the performances of desi drag artists at Jai Ho!, a Bollywood-themed, queer Chicago-based party, Khubchandani writes the performers “[unsettle] any stable orientation to Asianness in those gay spaces, revealing brown bodies and desi performances as hybdrid and unfixed, poking holes in the ‘not-American’ borders” (147).
With Indo-indenture performers of gender navigating between Indo-indenture diaspora and culture and South Asian and white-centric performance spaces and nightlife, there is an immediate return to and confrontation of the question “What does South Asian” mean? What does “desi” mean? Not all Indo-indenture descendants identify or locate their brownness in South Asia, India or the word “desi”, despite carrying remnants of the subcontinent through, not only their bloodlines, but also gestures, dance, wardrobe, music, makeup and more. The way drag offers play and experimentation of gender for many, it also offers the same play and experimentation with cultural identity and brownness to those descending from indenture. A drag performer carrying the childhood nostalgia of Bollywood dance and lipsync to a nightclub stage 20-40+ years later confronts these questions of identity in their craft, the audience they’re performing for, and how they are perceived. In some ways, they may embody exactly what Professor Khubhandani writes on desi drag artists, but, in other ways, they may even create and play with an increased unsettling and orientation to Asianness with greater hybridity, fusions and creolization occurring within their indenture heritage and identity. They “[poke] holes” in “‘not-American’ borders” and perceptions of their non-Americanness, that is to say their non-Canadianness and non-Usonianness. But they also “[poke] holes” in the borders of South Asianness/Indianness/Brownness in relation to indenture and the new hybrid cultures they carry. What does this mean for Indo-indenture descendants? For non-indenture South Asians? And for various other out-groups?
In this episode, we chat with Tifa Wine, Mx. Quest, Bijuriya and Sundari the Indian Goddess, four indenture-descendant drag artists in tkranto (Toronto), tiohtià:ke – mooniyang (Montréal) and various Munsee Lenape land comprising New York City on drag, performing gender, being Trinidadian and Guyanese and the complex questions of identity.
Work Cited
Khubchandani, Kareem. Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife. University of Michigan Press, 2020.
Tifa Wine
![](https://sites.middlebury.edu/diasporicchildrenofindenture/files/2022/01/Tifa-Wine-819x1024.png)
Ryan Persadie/Tifa Wine is an artist, educator, performer, and researcher based in Toronto, Canada. His aesthetic and scholarly work interrogates the relationships and the entanglements between queer Indo-Caribbean diasporas, Caribbean feminisms, Afro-Asian intimacies, legacies of indenture, performance, embodiment, and popular culture. His writing can be found in the Stabroek News, A Colour Deep, Gay City News, and MUSICultures. He also works with and organizes with multiple community groups including the Caribbean Equality Project, and Queeribbean Toronto.
Outside of academia, he also works as a drag artist where he goes by the stage name of Tifa Wine. In this capacity, he uses embodied archives of song, dance, comedy, gesture, make-up, story-telling and fashion to pursue calls of decolonial and feminist pedagogy. He has performed across the GTA and internationally and works across mediums of live performance, video, and photography.
Mx. Quest
![](https://sites.middlebury.edu/diasporicchildrenofindenture/files/2022/01/MxQuest-819x1024.png)
Miranda EJ. Warner is a genderqueer, mixed-race, Indo-Guyanese activist and artist of many disciplines. They are the driving force behind queer clown collective #ClownsKillEmpires, as well as a member of Les Femmes Fatales Women of Colour Burlesque. A regular fixture in drag (as Sydney Quest) and burlesque (as Imogen Quest) scenes worldwide, they have spent the pandemic taking #ClownsKillEmpires online, to showcase the most ridiculous QTBIPOC digital art they can find.
Bijuriya
![](https://sites.middlebury.edu/diasporicchildrenofindenture/files/2022/01/Bijuriya-1-819x1024.png)
Bijuriya is a drag queen living in Montreal/Tiohtiake, Canada. She’s half Indo-Caribbean and half-Québécoise. On-stage Bjiuriya is a dazzling thunderbolt of energy and quirkiness. Bijuriya is inspired by her South Asian culture and appreciated for her proud, festive and humorous outlook on Bollywood and all things Desi! With a background as a musician and interdisciplinary artist, she is currently creating a theatrical solo show to be premiered at Montréal Arts Interculturels in March 2022.
Sundari the Indian Goddess
![](https://sites.middlebury.edu/diasporicchildrenofindenture/files/2022/01/Sundari-819x1024.png)
Under the stage names Sundari the Indian Goddess and International Dancer Zaman, Mohamed Afzal Amin, a native of Guyana, has over 15 years of award-winning experiences as a performer. Both as Zaman and as Sundari, Amin draws on his training in Bollywood, chutney, and multiple Caribbean and classical Indian dance styles to promote Indo-Caribbean arts and culture and the multiple, intersectional identities of LGBTQ+ Caribbean immigrants in the diaspora. Zaman is one of the founding members and the lead choreographer of the Taranng Dance Troupe (Waves of the Future), a group of diversely trained dancers amplifying visibility and unity within the Caribbean performing arts community in the New York metropolitan tri-state area. And, as an LGBTQ+ rights activist and artist, he has pioneered several historic initiatives leading to queer and drag-centric performance pieces in faith-based institutions and at religious and cultural parades and festivals under both of his ionic personalities. In 2021, Amin bridged the skills, expertise and wisdom of his performer personalities into Zamandari, a consultancy, mentorship and community engagement platform to support new and up and coming Caribbean artists and connect the public with training, volunteer, and community support opportunities.
Episode 10a
Episode 10b
Episode 10c