Labor Day Activities

Wrestling Caribbean American Identity during Festivals

Hello, I took a week off for Labor Day to recharge. Over my break and into this week, I leaned into more Caribbean things than normal. This is to be expected, given the parade on Eastern Parkway. However, I say “than normal” because although parts of my family are from Caribbean islands, on a daily basis, I identify as African American more. I’m third-generation Caribbean, so this heritage comes from my dad’s parents. And I, like many children, identify with my mom’s culture more because she was the one to teach me what heritage and culture meant for our family. My dad and his mother have passed, and with that, some of my connection to their culture and heritage.  

My dad’s side of the family is from Jamaica, Trinidad, Cuba, and Turks and Caicos Island (TCI). His dad was born in Cuba, but his mother migrated to Cuba from Jamaica. Assumedly, his father is also Jamaican. But, according to family lore, that might not be the case. On his mother’s side, she grew up on Turks and Caicos Island. Her mother was from Trinidad and her father’s family possibly migrated from Dominican Republic and possibly Scotland. My grandmother referred to her hometown as “that rock she had to get away from.” She never felt nostalgic for that home.

Being Caribbean in downstate New York is like another kind of Caribbean identity. In Mount Vernon, my hometown, Jamaicans come out in full force to celebrate independence on August 6. Two years ago, the area surrounding City Hall, where 4 or 5 bus routes intersect, was blocked off for a week to celebrate 60 years of independence. You heard concerts and fireworks for days from miles away. As mentioned, Brooklyn has the parade on Labor Day on the parkway. Queens, where my mom’s family lives, has a large concentration of Guyanese and Trinidadians.

But, since college claiming Caribbean heritage feels messy and complicated, especially around August when flags are for sale. My sister dragged me this year to one of many concerts at Roy Wilkens Park to celebrate Caribbean culture. On the Sunday we went out, Machel Montano was honored with a key to the city from the mayor. At the festival, my sister and I discussed which flag we would buy if we had the money. She expressed hope that, at some point, we could fly TCI’s flag. I cringed and responded that feels against the spirit of the weekend. TCI are a part of the British Overseas Territories. The TCI flag incorporates the UK’s flag into the design. In a celebration about unity, self-sufficiency, and heritage, bringing in reminders of the colonizer feels like throwing a wet blanket on the festivities.

At the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival, a conversation between Haitian-American Writers Edwidge Danticat and Roxanne Gay only heightened this distance between my sense of self and my Caribbean heritage. The writers talked about their distance, both physical and emotional, from their homeland, the tension between what happens on the ground and the information they receive, understanding the history, and their connections to culture. Intellectually, these themes match my story. Even some of the jokes reminded me of moments from my childhood. Gay reminisced about weekend hangouts with other Haitian Americans in Nebraska, where the parents tried to solve all of Haiti’s problems. She and the other children occupied themselves until it was time to go. Still, once Danticat started speaking about artists, intellectuals, and writers from Haiti, shame.

The same shame appeared during college when a professor in the Africana Studies department rightfully called me out for not taking his Afro-Caribbean Philosophy class. To be fair, the class was graduate-level work masquerading as an undergraduate class. But, I have put off learning about Caribbean identity. On some level, I know doing this means contending with how history, culture, and philosophy intersect with a complicated relationship with my dad, estranged and toxic family members, and family secrets. So, maybe the struggle is less about identifying only as an African American. It’s simply easier to think about the parts of culture and identity that can be celebrated at festivals. I was never ready to do the work to understand my background. Hopefully, I can be soon.

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