I'm So Proud to Be Your Queen

The image of black queens has a rich legacy within African diasporic discourse. This article examines Barbadian singer Alison Hinds's performance as Soca Queen. Hinds's prolific career spans decades. Her fans named her the Queen of Soca and she took on the designation, titling her first solo album Soca Queen and her second Caribbean Queen. I argue that Hinds uses the Queen trope as a diasporic resource, allowing her to negotiate diverse standards of respectability, femininity, and sensuality while offering herself as a representation of Barbados, the wider Caribbean region, and specifically the women within it. Such a performance draws on both Afrocentric reclamations of royalty and critical analyses that seek to do more than celebrate a mythic African past.