Anjali “Anj” Persad is a Trinidadian American influencer on a mission to bring positive representation for both the Caribbean community and LGBTQ+ community. Through her viral comedy videos replying to her commenters, her work with the Round Table Game Show and her many personal projects, Anj is a comedian bringing worlds together.
As a proud daughter of immigrants, Anj believes that her own story of success starts with her parents’ story of migration. As a child, her father and his siblings immigrated from Trinidad to Midland, Texas, through a Baptist school whose program attracted foreign students from the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America. In his adulthood, Anj’s father would reunite with his childhood friend, Anj’s mother, and the two would marry and settle in Tampa, Florida. They would go on to have two children, Anj and Shelina.
Like her father, Anj was a racial minority in her community. Despite this isolating experience, Anj forged an identity for herself in her youth through her creative skills. Anj played the saxophone for more than 13 years and would go on to receive a full scholarship to study at the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford in West Hartford, Connecticut, with a double major in music education and saxophone performance.
During her second year of undergrad, Anj’s expertise gave her the unique opportunity to audition to join the Army as a saxophone player. Due to her high-ranking audition, she was given the choice of where she wanted to be stationed. Anj took this opportunity to follow a lifelong dream of pursuing music and joined the military as a part of the United States New York City Army Jazz Band. This gave her the opportunity to travel between Florida and Queens, New York. However, after her training, Anj developed the potentially life-threatening condition rhabdomyolysis. This led to Anj losing muscle mass in her legs, being unable to walk for months and eventually leaving the military.
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While navigating her physical health, obsessive-compulsive disorder and bipolar disorder, Anj found hope in the way that nurses took care of her, inspiring her to go back to school for nursing. This led to her working in hospice, cardiac med-surg intensive care units, emergency rooms and more. Ultimately, she decided that she did not want to pursue a full-time career in nursing, after gaining experience in the field.
Anj then pivoted her focus to her parents’ small business. Her parents owned a liquor store and she started to post videos with tips for those who didn’t know how to navigate shopping at a liquor store. Those videos started to gain traction online, but still left Anj wanting to connect with her audience more deeply.
On the suggestion of her friends, Anj decided to post a video replying to a comment to boost her engagement and replied to the comment “I’ve never seen an Indian stud.” In her reply, she clarified that the term “stud” was created by and used to identify masculine Black lesbians and that she was Indo Caribbean, therefore she did not use the word stud. This led to discourse online about Anj’s cultural positioning in America, specifically as a masculine lesbian of color. This discourse allowed Anj to clarify her ethnic background as an Indo Trinidadian American and taught her that aspects of her culture overlapped with African American culture. By laughing along with her audience and leaning into cultural commonalities, Anj forged a brand built on community, authenticity and laughter.
As long as you have some sort of melanin, we have a lot in common. That’s how I was able to process that, Anj says.
The influencer would go on making videos poking fun at herself and replying to comments, or laughing in response to hate comments. Her following has now grown to more than 1 million followers across Instagram and TikTok. With this rise to internet stardom and the love and support of her parents and older sister, Anj started pursuing content creation full time in 2024 and now resides in Los Angeles, where she works on the Round Table Game Show, Breasties and several personal endeavours.
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As the only non-Black member of the Round Table group, she feels honored to be welcomed into their space and grateful for the community they’ve built together. Her experience working with women of multiple ethnic descents on the show has helped her learn how she can blend humor and shared cultural experiences to bring people together with her work.
Meeting everyone at Round Table has changed my life for the better. They immediately and quickly became my coworkers, to friends, to family. I consider all of them family now.
While finding her community, Anj has also had her share of struggles with being a masculine presenting lesbian. Anj has faced a number of microaggressions for being perceived as a man, both within and outside of the Caribbean community. Anj recalls being aggressively patted down when going through airport security and receiving glares in the women’s washroom, simply because her masculine appearance does not fit people’s expectations of who women are. These microaggressions remind Anj of why representation matters in media, and how proud she is to unapologetically be herself, on and off camera.
Representation of Indo Caribbean women and queer folks has been at the front of Anj’s mind since her youth. She recalls being a child, not seeing anyone who resembled her on TV. This became even more true in her teen years when she started to present masculinely and noticed that the queer media she was consuming centered white characters and lacked representation for masc women.
As a public figure now, Anj believes that her visibility helps people understand that womanhood comes in many forms, and they are all worthy of being celebrated. She recognizes the privilege she has with both her followers and supportive family. As a result, she hopes to use her experiences to challenge the harmful narratives around Indo Caribbean women and masc lesbians alike.
By being visible, she hopes that her moments of discomfort will pave the way for the next generation of young people from all walks of life to see themselves reflected through her. She’s proud to be a comfort creator for people in both the Caribbean community and LGBTQ+ community, and to unite people through the work she does.
I have Christian pastors that DM me saying, ‘I have preached against people like you, but coming across you, I changed my mind. So, thank you.
Despite the discomfort that comes with breaking new ground, Anj is eager to continue to push the limits of her comedy and presentation.
I’m willing to go through the uncomfortable [stand-up comedy performance] to just share my story and make some people laugh, especially in today’s political climate. I find a lot of power in being able to make so many people of so many different backgrounds just laugh. I think there’s so much power in that and it’s really just beautiful.
Anj sees content creation as a means for creating long-term stability in the creative field. She credits her parents with instilling a business mindset in her and giving her the drive to continually pursue betterment. While currently in talks for TV production and more, there is no telling where Anj will take her signature laugh next. Having pursued stand-up comedy, won a Webby Award and built a dedicated fanbase, Anj hopes to continue using laughter to bring worlds together, in spite of the forces that try to silence her and women who share her experiences.
