Jamaican LGBTQ activist tells of sexual and spiritual awakenings
Jamaican LGBTQ human rights activist Angeline Jackson has written a book about her sexual and spiritual awakenings. “Funny Gyal: My Fight Against Homophobia in Jamaica”, scheduled for publication in June, can be ordered now.
Jackson founded the organization Quality of Citizenship Jamaica, which advocates on behalf of lesbian and bisexual women.
She is currently working on a Master of Divinity degree with the intention of seeking ordination as a Unitarian Universalist minister. As part of that program, she is serving as intern minister at the Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena, California. She also serves as an expert witness in LGBTQ+ asylum cases for queer Jamaicans, particularly lesbians, seeking asylum in various countries.
While she was writing the book, she recalls:
“I noticed that there were a lot of challenges throughout my life that I had swept to the side to continue moving forward. Some of that was not healthy, but I think it set the foundation for the resilience and perseverance I needed in later years.
“After spending years in LGBTQ+ activism and actively trying to avoid faith-based work, I’ve come back around to faith work and a lot of my energy and enthusiasm around that is connected to the role my faith played in my childhood and late teenage development.”
In the publisher’s words, the book is:
“The inspiring story of Angeline Jackson, who stood up to Jamaica’s oppression of queer youth to demand recognition and justice.
“When Angeline Jackson was a child, she wondered if there was something wrong with her for wanting to kiss the other girls. But as her sexuality blossomed in her teens, she knew she wouldn’t “grow out of it” and that her attraction to girls wasn’t against God. In fact, she discovered that same-sex relationships were depicted in the Bible, which she read devoutly, even if the tight-knit evangelical Christian community she grew up in believed any sexual relationship outside of marriage between a man and woman was a sin, and her society, Jamaica, criminalized homosexual sex.
“Angeline’s story begins with her traumatic experience of “corrective rape” when she is lured by an online predator, then traces her childhood through her sexual and spiritual awakening as a teen — falling in love, breaking up, coming out, and then being forced into conversion therapy.
“Sometimes dark, always threadbare and honest, Funny Gyal chronicles how Angeline’s faith deepens as a teenager, despite her parents’ conservative values and the strict Christian Jamaican society in which she lives, giving her the courage to challenge gender violence, rape culture, and oppression.”
Advance orders for the book may be placed here:
- In United States, at Bookshop.org.
- In Canada, at ShopLocal.
About Angeline Jackson
Jackson is an LGBTQ human rights activist, an HIV/AIDS educator, and the former executive director of Quality of Citizenship Jamaica. In 2015, President Barack Obama recognized Angeline as one of Jamaica’s remarkable young leaders at the Town Hall for Youth in Kingston, Jamaica. She also participated on a U.S. Senate briefing panel and attended the first White House Forum on Global LGBT Human Rights. Angeline lives in Jamaica.
For years, she has been an active supporter of the St. Paul’s Foundation for International Reconciliation, the financial sponsor of the Erasing 76 Crimes news site. In her words:
“The Foundation was an early player and shaper in my activism. Because of the Foundation, we were able to register Quality of Citizenship Jamaica. Through the Foundation and the Spirit of 76 conference in 2012, I began my international activism, speaking on stages and panels. St. Paul’s Foundation helped in the connections and friendships I made. The Spirit of 76 conference is a memory that stays with me. The knowledge I gained during that time, from the formal structure of the conference as well as from other participants, was beneficial in the activism I engaged in in Jamaica.”
Earlier articles about her include:
- Progress in Jamaica toward ‘world as it should be’ (June 2015)
- Jamaican lesbian activist singled out by Obama (April 2015)
- United in battle against sexism, homophobia (November 2014)
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