Thoughts of a Third Generation Jamaican Immigrant: A Commitment to Continue the Culture
2020 has been a crazy year. Like we’re
in a never-ending episode of Black Mirror. These ‘unprecedented times’ have
been tough on everyone, I’ve had friends who’ve lost their jobs, struggled with
mental health issues or simply found it exhausting and disheartening to cope with
the day-to-day reality of not being able to do those little things we all look
forward to in life. As we head towards the end of the year, many of us are
reflecting on our recent experiences and wondering what lies ahead.
For my family, this year was made
all the more difficult by the recent passing of my Nan. She was the backbone of
our family, someone we all loved dearly and a key figure in all our lives. Born
in St. Elizabeth, Jamaica in 1929, she was adopted by a family friend at a
young age and grew up in Kingston, where she later met my Grandad whilst
working at the famous Jamaica Gleaner. Just a few days after the wedding, my
Grandad left for England, where he would get settled and soon send for my Nan
to join him. She landed here on 1st December 1960 and they ended up in
Luton. I can’t imagine what must have been going through her head when she
first arrived and I don’t know much about their early experiences here, but I
do know that their strength, determination and love gave them over 60 years of
marriage and a family of five children and seven grandchildren.
When I think about my Nan, I
think of one word – strength. From her early life experiences, to moving to England
and dedicating 30 years of her life to working in the NHS, to her often stern
attitude shouting at me and my cousins to keep it down as we ran around the
house insisting the whole family watch another one of the dance routines we had
spent the whole day choreographing, or insisting I mustn’t leave the house
without a woolly hat on in September. She battled dementia for twelve long years
and somehow bounced back from so many scares, where we all gathered at her
bedside wondering if the time had eventually come to say goodbye. Her life was
by no means easy but she never gave up, she carried on for as long as she possibly
could. As we all come to grips with her passing and as we enter a new year,
I’ve been reflecting a lot on the impact she had and how we can continue her
legacy.
As well as being a general
inspiration and source of strength, my Nan was also the main connection I had
to my Jamaican heritage. The main way was through food, I always remember her
in the kitchen cooking for all of us; it was the way she demonstrated her love
and care. Sitting in that front room, eating her chicken, rice and peas,
looking up at family photos and scrolls paying homage to Jamaica on almost
every wall, I felt connected to the homeland of my grandparents. I’ve been
thinking a lot about how much I want to uphold that connection to Jamaica and
how I will eventually pass it on to my children and so on. This is something
that is really important to me in my own life, it’s something I’ve always
thought about but it’s been at the front of my mind lately. I don’t want the
connection to Jamaica and the West Indies in general, to be diluted in future
generations.
It sounds cliché but my first trip to Jamaica aged fourteen was pretty lifechanging. Before that trip, I was an awkward, shy teenager struggling with my identity in a nearly all-white private school. My Mum recognised the difficulties I was having and decided it was time to take me. I remember stepping off the plane, being hit with the humidity and a sense of connection to this place I had never been to before. I developed an understanding of where half of me had come from and I gained so much confidence from that. I can’t emphasise enough how important that trip was for me at that stage in my life and how my sense of self and identity might have been different if I hadn’t have gone. This timing is even more ironic as my family had been planning a big trip to Jamaica this Christmas. This would’ve been the first visit for some of my cousins and I was so excited for them to have that same experience; we were also planning to travel to some of the places where my Grandparents grew up, to learn more about what their lives would’ve been like before they came to England.
The
experience of every generation will obviously be very different; I think of my Grandparents’
experience, compared to my Dad’s experience, compared to mine…I have grown up
as a mixed race woman in the multicultural environment of the UK, integrating with
individuals from all backgrounds and walks of life, my taste in things from
fashion to food to music, a reflection of all this. This also means there’s a
high chance of dating someone of another race. The dating dilemma is a common
topic of conversation with some of my friends; I recently brought up how I was
once dating someone who said “well, our children would really just be white
wouldn’t they?” and how I argued this wasn’t true, that they’d never lose that connection
to their Black heritage. It made me think about other family set-ups where this
might be the case, where the Black would just ‘fade out’. I remember watching
the BBC’s Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle some years ago, the final episode
featured a white-passing great-grandchild of a Jamaican who arrived on The Empire
Windrush. She starts looking back at her family tree during a school project,
considering her own heritage and identity, and relating this to the wider implications for
the Caribbean community in Britain. This episode posed the question - how much
longer will this community survive with a discrete identity?
How many descendants of West Indian immigrants my age even still have a direct connection to the region? What connection will their children have if we, their parents, don’t uphold cultural traditions? Will they just identify as British and no longer as Jamaican?
When I
speak about knowledge, I’m referring to deeper
understanding of our history as much as I’m talking about the food, the music,
the dialect…In this context, it’s important to
relate the specific West Indian experience back to the history of the region. We
can’t get away from themes such as slavery and colonialism, and I think that education
on this impact is so important to understand - but there’s so much more to it. Jamaica was the first country in the British West
Indies to gain independence in 1962 and for such a small island, Jamaica
has had a huge impact on the world. With
Jamaica the island with the largest population of the former British colonies in
the region, Jamaicans made up the majority of West Indian immigrants in their
respective new homes and subsequently, their culture was spread with them.
Reggae is synonymous with Jamaican culture and music originating from
the island has influenced a range of genres that are celebrated all over the
world, from grime and hip-hop, jungle and drum and bass. Across the UK, you
hear “wagwan” from any nationality and ‘Multicultural London English’ is
thought to have largely arisen from immigrants of Jamaican and
Caribbean descent. As a ‘small’ island, Jamaica has undoubtedly had a massive
international impact…“We likkle but we tallawah”
I guess my point is, it’s
important for all of us to have a connection with our heritage; “If you don't know where you've come
from, you don't know where you're going”. It’s imperative that my generation, and those that come
after me, still feel pride and attachment to their West Indian heritage. The
experiences, knowledge and culture cannot die out.
It’s only a start, but I’m learning to
cook more (shout out to my friend for suggesting I use this lockdown time to
teach myself how to cook West Indian food). I’ve actively been trying to learn
more about the lives of my Grandparents before they came here and I’ve even
thought about applying for my Jamaican passport via descent. I’ve always sought
to become more immersed in the culture and maybe thought it was something I’d
been missing; it definitely contributed to me going to live in St.
Vincent after the opportunity arose last year. Being immersed in Caribbean
culture had me thinking how different it would’ve been for me to have that
experience but in Jamaica, maybe even with the family over there who I’ve never
met. I also found myself thinking, when looking out at the sunset, what a shame
it was that my Grandparents never got to return to Jamaica together. They
should’ve been sitting out on a veranda somewhere like I was, looking out at
the world, proud of everything they’d achieved. As we prepare for the moment we
have to finally say goodbye to our Nan, I promise myself that I will always try
to channel her strength. I will remain grateful for the sacrifices that her and
my Grandad made which provided us all with the opportunities we have today. I
will continue the culture.
Here am I
I'm here for you Jamaica
Dry your eyes
Girl smile
Smile for me Jamaica”
-
Chronixx
Written by Danielle Johnson
As a tribute to my Nan, Hilda Adassa Johnson
Fantastic read. Identity is such an interesting factor for 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants. Simply trying to answer the question "where are you from?", was weird for me as a kid.
ReplyDeleteGreat read!!! So important for Afro-Caribbeans in diaspora to remember our cultural roots. Sadly many of us are in diaspora are abandoning our roots and favouring western assimilation. Glad to know you’re not one of those people! God bless!
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