From Another Place
Inspired by James Baldwin: From Another Place, Directed by Sedat Pakay.
I left my home at 11 years old. Well, home… if you can call it that.
My father jokes that all Jamaica ever gave him was a birth certificate. Not an education, not security, not a roof over his head. I only have two memories of Jamaica — being great at school and scared for my life.
What is home? Is it a place? Is it a state of mind? Or people? Or a feeling? I think it’s a little bit of all of these. Once you’ve been vulnerable in a place, among people, in an experience, they leave an imprint on you that you can never erase.
When I came to America, I found a new type of home. I found out that I’m Black and that came with an automatic family. A family that resembled me in ways, but that I’d come to find out I was not alike at all, in others. Black history in America, past and present, is not something you can assume yourself into.
I lived in France for a year. Not Paris. I grew to speak the language fluently, but I was not among family.
In a way, my home has been the in-between. Platform 9 and ¾. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Still, I can’t help but hope to find it whole someplace, one day.