Back to My Roots Part II

Last week I hope I illustrated that I am extremely proud of my mother’s Jamaican lineage. However, I would be remiss to brag about my maternal side and not mention the beautiful heritage my father has passed on to me.

My dad grew up in the country of Belize, in an area called Dangriga. He is part of a group of people called the Garinagau, or Garifuna. I remember my childhood being marked by his proud stories of how the Garifuna people descended from a group of West Africans who were shipwrecked and escaped captivity, settling originally in St. Vincent. (Although readers of Ivan Van Sertima’s They Came Before Columbus may assert that their history in the Americas begins as early as 10th century B.C.). They intermarried with indegenous South American groups and became known as Black Caribs. Generations later, the people came to be found primarily in Belize, Honduras, and Guatemala. A complicated history certainly, but by now you must know that complexity is my mode of operation.

Like with my Jamaican side, I grew up with cultural emblems of my Belizean heritage surrounding me. Whether it was artwork on the walls, Punta music on the stereo, or Fry Jack on the stove, I soaked up my culture without a conscious thought. I brought cassava bread to kindergarten as a snack and came home thrilled to tell my parents that all the kids in my class begged me for a piece each day. I knew I was different, but I was proud.

I also had the privilege of paying a visit to Belize the summer before I started high school. We went for a family reunion sparked by my grandfather’s 75th birthday. The time I spent there was some of the best experiences of my life. It was during this trip that I watched one of my younger cousins learn how to swim. It was there that I hiked to the top of the Mayan ruins of Xunantunich with my family and contemplated the vastness of the world around me. Late at night, dancing on a beach surrounded by people who looked like me, ate like me, and moved like me, I had never felt more at home.

Today I think of my Belizean heritage as a testament to my strength and distinctiveness. Belize is a land nested firmly between Mexico and Guatemala. But despite being part of Latin America, the official language of the country is English. In this way, Belize is one of its kind, as am I. However, the country is home to a diverse range of languages and cultures. As a multilingual, multiethnic first-generation immigrant, I am a living monument to the mixing and coinciding of different cultures and languages myself. Knowing that I am descended in part by a group of people who escaped the bondage of enslavement and continued to persevere in the face of displacement and colonialism inspires me to persevere in the face of difficulties each day.

Every day I am more enamoured with my culture and hungry for the history that was not taught to me in school. I have been privileged to be able to read articles online, begin to learn the Garifuna language via YouTube, and connect with cousins via Facebook and birthday parties. Each avenue brings me a stronger sense of self as I am able to connect to a larger community that looks more like the one I experienced in the four walls of my home.

As long as I live in this country, I am sure that my identity will be infinitely complex. After all, how I see myself will rarely reflect how others see me just by looking at me. “Blackness” in this country exists in proximity to whiteness in a way that is entirely foreign from the experience my parents had growing up in their home countries. A relative of mine recently said that upon moving to the US as an adult, “I identified as Afro-Latina because Latinx culture was easier to identify with than African American culture.” I was struck by this because it struck a nerve of how I had always felt growing up. Yet my attempts to explore my identity have often been met with criticisms based on the very assumption that growing up in the United States and being Black made me African American.

So yes, it is easier to identify as simply Black. In this way I do not have to spend time or energy defending the complexity of my identity which is only further muddied by trying to understand it solely through a colonialized lens. But I have discovered that my unique identity is not a burden to bear. Rather, it is a prize to be lauded as I move through life in ways that may mystify the outside viewer. 

After all, I am a Black woman. Black history is my history. But when it comes to my individual history, there is so much of it that you don’t know.