MyStory
The Punctum - Resident Alien
A recent search for legal papers at my family's homestead in Nassau, Bahamas unearthed this document, a passport belonging to my Jamaican-born father. Having migrated to The Bahamas as a skilled worker, he was given a British passport, showing him to be a subject of the crown in the Bahama islands (not to be confused with an actual Bahamian). How this image I took of the document serves as a punctum for my personal biography is explored in item one of the entry below. Images to the right capture the emerging theme, Resident Alien, in the discourse of the popular (02) and the expert (03).
In the book TELEtheory, Gregory L. Ulmer invites readers to experiment with the creation of a mystory, a fragmented, personal reflection that taps into the unconscious and draws upon three levels of discourse: personal, popular and expert. This is my experimental exercise into mystory.
Resident Alien
Alien: Relating to another country; also, a being that comes from or lives in another world
01
PERSONAL: Conflicting Identities
Alien. As a child, the first thing that popped into my head when I heard this polysemous word was a little green being from another world with huge bugged out eyes. Depending on one's life perspective, that being is to be either loved (like E.T.) or loathed (like, well, Alien, starring Sigourney Weaver). My movie references age me I'm sure, as does the picture to the left, with me, in pigtails, enjoying a rare Christmas holiday with my entire family together. As an adult, I would learn that the majority of my family at the time of this photograph were aliens of a different kind, though the concerns about whether to be loved or loathed still applied.
My father migrated from Jamaica to The Bahamas as a skilled welder and was later joined there by my mother and three sisters. My brother and I would be born in The Bahamas many years later. While I am a Bahamian by birth, I often couldn't help feeling just a little alien in the Bahamian environment at times. After all, the Jamaican dialect spoken by my mother, a source of comfort for me at home as a child, was different from the Bahamian dialect I spoke and shared with my friends, something that was not lost on them after I responded to questions like "who is that Jamaican woman who answered your housephone" or "Monique, a Jamaican woman on the playground looking for you - das your mommy?"
As an adult, some Bahamian friends were surprised to discover that I didn't eat crab and rice, a popular Bahamian dish, until I was about 14 years old, when a neighbor shared it with my family. Weird. What they hadn't considered was that I grew up in a thoroughly Jamaican household in the center of a Bahamian island. I only ate meals that my mother cooked for us daily, all steeped in Jamaican culture: curried goat, rice and peas, ackee and codfish, fried dumplings and so many others. Many Bahamian friends enjoyed her cooking as well - her curried chicken was frequently requested for special occasions, and she always obliged. Such things were a source of pride concerning my Bahamian identity rooted in Jamaican heritage - but then, there was the other side.
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As a child, my friends would say things like "I goin' by my cousin house this weekend" or I observed them walking and talking with ease among peers, casually noting during introductions, "Oh, these my cousins on my daddy side." I felt so alone, as I did not have a. single. cousin. in The Bahamas - They were all in Jamaica! Being the youngest born in my family, with a 20 year gap between myself and my eldest sister, deepened my sense of isolation, and I resented not having a cousin of my own age to share secrets with. I made up for the loneliness by meeting new friends in books, like Nancy Drew, or by inventing dramatic storylines for my Barbie and Ken dolls, storylines that continued for weeks, with plots that rivaled any telenovela.
As a working adult, I was advised by my mother, "Always remember, you may be born in The Bahamas, but you are still a Jamaican." I would later understand that such advice was grounded in the painful experiences of prejudice and unfair treatment that she and some of my siblings experienced in The Bahamas as Jamaicans, particularly, in the workplace, sometimes implicitly and on other occasions, explicitly. Many immigrants in other countries, and their children, are quite familiar with this vacillation between the resident country's love of the alien culture in some regards but also their hate of, specifically, alien success, the sting of which was felt even more when two of my sisters migrated to the United States due to frustration with the protracted and sometimes political process of obtaining Bahamian citizenship, even after living in The Bahamas for many years.
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As a Bahamian, I did not experience severe forms of prejudice, but I did feel a certain "otherness" at specific times - Like when I was frequently asked to explain where my maiden surname "McFarlane" came from, a question I haven't fielded in years now that I have adopted my husband's unquestionably Bahamian surname, 'Bain.' Also, because of the archipelagic nature of the Bahamian islands, it is not unusual for someone to ask, "Which island is your family from?" to determine whether there is some shared history or identity with a fellow Bahamian. I have felt the sting of disappointment or dismissal through a slight downturn of the lips or a truncated conversation, determined by a solitary "oh" when a Bahamian island like "Eleuthera" or "Abaco" was not named as expected, but instead - Jamaica.
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Nevertheless, I believe that my alien adjacent beginnings have formed the person that I am, for good or for bad, depending on whom you speak with or what version of me you encounter. Personally, I know that I can be reserved because I have learned to be slow to trust others, but I can also be very empathetic, or if I am comfortable, even engaging, as I strive to ensure that no one feels unaccepted in any situation because they are different in some visible way. Professionally, I do believe that my love for English developed because of the years of dictation of my mother's sentiments, expressed in letters that I "fixed" on her behalf before mailing to many of her relatives back home to Jamaica. My alien adjacent beginnings allow me to support the underdog in just about every situation, and this applies also to my work in the writing center. The sense of purpose I felt was unmatched in the writing center, where I worked for over 24 years and supported student writers, especially those who are part of marginalized communities, or who had fought their way into the academy for various sociocultural reasons.
I also learned early to be self-reliant and industrious, recognizing that the flip side of that coin is my tendency to isolate and to be driven by an unrealistic sense of perfectionism. Like some aliens in the otherworldly sense, I have learned to shift shapes, becoming what is needed when I have to be it - but I now recognize that practice to be harmful to my sense of self, and besides, it is exhausting. My current studies in Memphis is one of many ways that I am actively seeking to unlearn the attitudes, beliefs and behaviors rooted in my "alienness" that no longer serve me. I want a new theme, one that is commonly sought by aliens and residents alike: I belong.
02
Big Title
HISTORICAL MOMENT
POPULAR
Entertainment: BOB MARLEY
The historical visit of Jamaican and international recording star Bob Marley to The Bahamas in the 1970s remains etched in my memory. While the details are nebulous, I do remember his visit being viewed as controversial. I was about 8 years old at the time, but I recall the frustrations my parents and their West Indian friends expressed in the privacy of their homes, of course, about some Bahamians' outrage about his visit. Bob Marley was (and still is) a [inter]national Jamaican icon. His music was loved by his country and shared messages of hope, unity and resistance. As such, my parents were at a loss as to why his Rastafarianism was being allowed to overshadow what would be the cultural significance of his performance.
A significant part of my experience in our home was reggae music. In many ways, it was the soundtrack of our lives and a required element when my parents had friends over. I thought my father and his friends very cosmopolitan, though I would not have had the words in my vocabulary to describe them as that back then. I remember sitting on the floor in the room adjacent to where they gathered to listen to music, pour and consume glasses of brown rum and smoke cigarettes while they shared animated stories on any number of topics. Nothing and no one was off limits. In those moments, I wasn't an alien. I was at home in every sense of the word. And while I sometimes felt different outside of the home, because of my parents' rich heritage, I never felt ashamed.
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Generations later, my family gathered for another Christmas event in the same room my father and his friends once gathered in. In this new experience folded into an old space, my nephew, an American by birth, pays homage to Marley, his Jamaican heritage and delights the family with a riff from Marley's "Redemption Song."
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In the news story above, Our News Bahamas takes a look back at the Marley controversy. It was encouraging to see an original protester, noted Bahamian religious leader, Reverend Simeon Hall, acknowledge that his original position has changed and was due to, as he explains, a lack of knowledge at that time about Jamaican culture and the messages of social consciousness that Marley espoused through his music.
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Here is, perhaps, an example of the joke within mystories which Ulmer refers to in his text. Reggae music today is extremely popular in all its forms in The Bahamas. There is a healthy respect and appreciation for the culture of Jamaica that has been conveyed firstly, through it music. Of course prejudices against immigrant populations persist, a result of uninformed opinions and lack of exposure to the culture and experiences of the targeted group.
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The eponymously titled The Migration of Peoples from the Caribbean to the Bahamas, a book by Keith L. Tinker, also considers the contributions of immigrants to the country.
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Many are also ignorant of the contributions of migrant populations to their country's development in those years immediately before and after independence. My father, a welder, was employed by the shipyard, and through his work, he contributed to the development of other tradesmen in the country. Most notably he worked on the original bridge to Paradise Island, which stills stands today. Many of my parents' friends from Jamaica were also educators, members of the clergy and businessmen. I remember that the proprietor of a popular business establishment which specializes in the sale of Jamaican patties, Original Patties, was established by Mr. Mosely, one of my father's first friends when he arrived in Nassau. I also recall my parents telling me that many Jamaicans supported Bahamian calls for independence, providing perspective from their own independence which Jamaica achieved some eleven years prior to Bahamian independence in 1973.
In more recent times, many Jamaicans have migrated to The Bahamas for economic reasons and to work in homes, to do carpentry and as skilled barbers. There are still others who migrate to work in professional areas like education, medicine and law. A campus of the renowned University of the West Indies (UWI) is located in Jamaica, and many Bahamian students travel there for tertiary education.
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Community Connections
One of my sisters who lived a part of her life in Jamaica told me that the Junkanoo festival, a Bahamian Christmas procession rooted in African culture, was different from the version of it she attended in Jamaica. She remembers being afraid of the costumes and the music during the parade in Jamaica. In the Bahamas, however, she said the Junkanoo festival had a different kind of energy, one filled with joy. Perhaps both countries' festivals have different goals. It is true, however, that Bahamians, through their artistic and musical creativity, have made the Junkanoo experience one that is unique and unforgettable to every one who experiences it - for this reason, it is viewed as a uniquely Bahamian event. The drums, the horns, the cowbells, the conch shells, the dancers, the costumes, the crowd, the rhythm all produce a magic that is unexplainable - the pride I feel as a Bahamian in my soul when the Junkanoo music starts has yet to be matched. (Wear your headphones for an immersive experience as the Valley Boys prepare to leave "the gate" to perform on Bay Street).​
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Bahamian Anthropologist Dr. Nicolette Bethel in a blog post on the festival of Junkanoo notes that Bahamians "love to believe in the uniqueness of our traditions." She then goes on to explain how that festival is not unique to The Bahamas, as it is "one of several such John Canoe" festivals in the so-called New World" (https://nicobethel.com/nicobethel-blogworld-2/tag/Jamaica). Her comments speak to a shared heritage of Caribbean people and the false divides we sometimes put between ourselves.
​​​​Those remarks are not taken lightly as the Junkanoo parade is for many Bahamians the signatory cultural event of The Bahamas. But as my mother was fond of saying about Black people of the Caribbean, we are all from the "same ships" but landed at "different locations." That is a unifying way to consider the different cultures in the diaspora that were collectively oppressed by colonial and imperial powers. When we think of ourselves that way, perhaps there will be more celebration and less competition.
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I hope my reflection does not give the impression that I am not a proud Bahamian. I am only reflecting on the part of me that felt different. Indeed, it is quite the opposite. I am a proud Bahamian. I am also proud of my Jamaican heritage. They need not be mutually exclusive. I am a proud child of the Caribbean - a descendent of a people who survived the unspeakable. I am a woman. I am a human. I am a resident. I am an alien. And yet, I belong.
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EXPERT
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03