First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays from educators, students, parents, and others who think and write about public education.
For the first six years of my life, I grew up on the island of Trinidad.
I spoke with an accent, pronouncing three as “tree”. I ate Caribbean food such as roti, alo pie, AND I care. I was used to drinking water straight from coconuts, eating mangoes from my grandfather’s mango tree, meeting snakes and lizards, and seeing houses in every color of the rainbow.
I then immigrated to the United States with my mother and we have not been able to visit Trinidad since then. I enrolled in elementary school, where the students made fun of my “trees” and the teachers corrected them.
School lunches here tasted like they were made to feed more mouths than to be enjoyed. They mostly consisted of fast food with a side of canned fruit poured into a plastic cup and milk as our only hydration option. And here, people dried their clothes in the dryer, not outside on a line. There were no berry vines to pick, no roaming animals – just cars, crowds and work. It was hard to feel at home among the concrete buildings.
I soon became friends with children from Caribbean countries. We reminisced about authentic Caribbean food, laughed at each other’s impressions of Caribbean dialects, and listened to calypso. Being with them and doing these things made me feel closer to home. Eventually though, I got used to the way those around me spoke and imitated it with the help of American TV shows like “Good Luck Charlie” and musicians like Mariah Carey. I learned to pronounce my H’s and soon spoke with what I took to be an American accent.
Some adjustments were more difficult. There was a girl who compared my skin color to mud. Another girl, who despite being black herself, often told me “how much lighter” her skin was than mine, which “made it prettier.” I also had white friends telling me how beautiful I would look with straight hair.
American beauty standards made me aware of what I looked like for the first time. In Trinidad, most of the people who live there are either black or South Asian, and I have not experienced racism around skin color. Now, I found myself wanting to be lighter.
At the same time, I noticed that I felt no connection with my African-American classmates or with my African-Caribbean classmates who had adapted to African-American culture. I wanted to be friends with other black students at my school, but I couldn’t relate to them. After all, we weren’t interested in the same sports, music or clothing brands. I did not speak African American English. I ate different foods at home and did not celebrate the same holidays as in June.
As I considered my disconnection from African American culture, I began to think a lot about my African ancestors, whose history was interrupted by colonization and the slave trade in the Americas. I became more aware of what I shared with so many African Americans.
I continue to explore more about the connections between African, Caribbean, and Black American cultures, and I plan to teach my children parts of those cultures one day. For example, I watched videos about cooking soul food and its cultural significance, and I saw traces of it in Caribbean dishes, like macaroni pie. I watched American Black family series like Black-ish and read books centered around Black families like Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson. Like those in the Caribbean, many African Americans are religious and go to church, as is my family. All around me, I now see people who share my dark skin and extremely curly hair, which, despite the comments of my white friends, I have come to love.
I have started to connect with more classmates and have made friends by teaching them Trinidadian versions of American words such as bacchanal instead of chaos or drama. I show them the fruits we eat there that are not popular in the US, like the chennet, which is a bit like an orange.. In return, I learn about popular foods here and family traditions around holidays such as Juneteenth.
I don’t know which African region or tribe I come from. This is a deep wound for me. I can’t help but wonder what customs and traditions I would have grown up with if my family knew our ancestral African roots. What language would I speak? What traditional dress would I wear? What dances would I attend and what holidays would I celebrate? This is why I plan to take a DNA test and find out where my African ancestors are from. It’s my heritage to claim – connecting me and setting me apart from others at once.
Etana Williams is a 16-year-old from Brooklyn. She is a student at Brooklyn Technical High School and enjoys crocheting, reading and playing guitar in her free time.
or version of this essay originally appeared in YouthComm magazine.
