'Mwen enmé'w' (I love you): Black Queer Women's Social Positioning in the French Caribbean.

This article examines how Lycinaïs Jean, a Black French Caribbean zoukeuse and fusion artist who is a woman who loves women (WLW), navigates identity construction and expression within the heteronormative and male-dominated French Caribbean zouk music scene. Through discourse analysis of her social media, interviews, and songs, it shows that Lycinaïs strategically frames her music as centered on universal love rather than queer love, rejecting labels tied to her sexuality and aligning her identity with the French Caribbean concept of fè zanmi, which emphasizes desire and everyday actions over fixed identity categories. The study highlights her use of both French and French Creole to reveal or conceal gender and sexuality in her lyrics, with French serving as the primary language for explicit references to female same-sex love, while French Creole affirms her cultural and musical identity. Lycinaïs's approach reflects broader sociocultural constraints in the French Caribbean, where homophobia and respectability politics influence how WLW express themselves publicly, and her linguistic and artistic strategies illustrate a nuanced negotiation of visibility and acceptance within this context.