In the book titled, Nature’s Wild: Love, Sex, and Law in the Caribbean, Andil Gosine takes an interesting approach to demonstrate a global issue of homophobia and general exclusionary attitudes that societies have adopted towards marginalized communities. In this piece Gosine describes these global issues in a way that incorporates experiential storytelling on their experiences, and broader data, laws, and systemic forms of oppression. Before even diving into the book, Gosine’s book cover greets students with an intriguing image of a person blending into a jungle, while holding a rooster. By starting with this image, Gosine invites readers to pause and contemplate the message that is being conveyed, as it pairs beautifully with what is represented in the actual book. In this book report, I will share my perception of the work’s content.

Gosine’s book is so well constructed, that even without a clear thesis statement being mentioned, it is simple to infer what they are aiming to demonstrate. In an attempt to best represent what I understand as Gosine’s underlying thesis throughout their book, here is what I can offer: Throughout much of history, societies across the world have taken direct and indirect steps to marginalize certain populations to the point of animalization (alluding that some folks are not human, and instead animalistic), and today, we see the results of that treatment that manifests at local levels. For Gosine, who grew up in the Caribbean, they are able to share examples of experiences that help to demonstrate this argument that global historical forms of oppression have trickled down to modern, subtle, forms of oppression that are often overlooked.

Andil Gosine, the author of Nature’s Wild: Love, Sex, and Law in the Caribbean, is currently a professor of at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. As a professor, Gosine focuses on the studies of environmental arts, environmental justice, and Caribbean sexualities. Gosine grew up and attended grade school in Trinidad, where they had their first experiences with conversations on sexuality. Gosine is a person of color who also identifies as a member of the LGBTQ community. They were awarded the Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award for the book I am reporting on. Considering Gosine’s background as someone who grew up in the Caribbean through homophobia and other forms of discrimination, and as a professor of Caribbean sexualities, they seem credible for the topic they discuss in the book. This work contributes to the larger field of views of sexuality at the global level.

In their conversation about love, sex, and the law, Gosine employs a combination of experiential storytelling, legal research, and empirical evidence to support their claims. For instance, when discussing their personal intersections with homophobia, they say that when they were thirteen years old and a student at a Catholic all-boys school in Trinidad, the following happened:

“Father Larry pointed to the row of students in which I happened to be seated and ordered the five of us to stand up. ‘Prove to me,’ he instructed, ‘that you are not a homosexual.’ We stood silent in the nook between surface and seat of our creaky wooden desks. Father Larry paused, his slanted smile signaling sadistic delight about the humiliation that was certain to unfold.” (2)

Through the rest of their book, Gosine provides examples of legal systems penalizing non-heterosexual acts, and provides observations of societal statements that reinforce problematic norms of marginalization. 

For instance, Gosine shares the following information to offer a legal context of homophobia:

“In British Guiana, for example, three sections of the Criminal Law (Offences) Act targeted sodomy: Section 351 punishes acts of ‘gross indecency’ with a male person with a two-year prison sentence; Section 352 criminalizes any ‘attempt to commit unnatural offences,’ including a ten-year prison sentence for any ‘male [who] indecently assaults any other male person’; and Section 353 states that ‘everyone who commits buggery, either with a human being or with any other living creature, shall be guilty of felony and be liable to imprisonment for life.” (26)

These facts help readers understand a structural, systemic component to the issue of homophobia and animalization of those who do not fit with societal norms. Overall, this legal context can help people to understand the relation between systemic narratives and actions at the personal level, such as the homophobic act committed towards Gosine by Father Larry.

Further, Gosine shares examples of statements made by society that reinforce problematic gender norms. For instance, Gosine takes the time to review a dress code sign in Trinidad and Tobago that says the following:

“Males should not wear slippers, vests, short pants, or visible underwear. Females should not wear sleeveless tops, strapless tops, tank tops, short pants, or expose their midriff.” (53)

This statement is subtle, but it suggests that males should dress one way, and females should dress another way. It also reinforces a gender binary, which has been proven to be a problematic norm in itself.

I think this book does a great job connecting ordinary experience with broader societal issues and their earlier influences. For instance, Gosine’s experience with Father Larry plays an interesting piece throughout the book. Instead of serving as a singular example of homophobia, Gosine uses the example to relate to early homophobic tendencies during the colonization of Africa. By connecting unfortunately normal, frequent experiences with historical realities, readers can understand an unfortunately frequent broader scheme by many societies to treat people in inhumane ways. As a reader, Gosine motivated me to think about my life experiences and how they might relate to older, broader global issues that many others have experienced.

In this book, Gosine could have better explained the severe harm of viewing others in animalistic ways. Throughout the book, Gosine mentions ways that members of the LGBTQI+ community and other marginalized groups have been treated in inhumane forms. However, I think Gosine could have done more to help readers understand the severity of characterizing others as animalistic. Maybe Gosine could have accomplished this task by providing more examples of true animal treatment as compared to inhumane treatment. I think it is important that readers truly understand the severely offensive nature of animalizing others.

Overall, I think Gosine’s book was powerful, and I would suggest that others take the time to read about their take on modern societal marginalization and its relation to historical movements that supported discrimination. I was able to learn a lot from the book, especially about the overall connection between societal behaviors and larger structural policies and forms of treatment. My gained knowledge from Gosine’s writing can and will be applied to the way that I interpret forms of discrimination going forward.

Work cited:  

Gosine, Andil. Nature’s Wild: Love, Sex, and Law in the Caribbean. Duke University Press, 2021.