Bright End of Nowhere

Thinking about this has actually made me realize that there is yet another side that doesn't get spoken about. The side where someone's black mixed with something else and in my case I end up wondering if I'm appropriating the American African Descended experience, and if in doing so I'm letting go of my own culture.

I do know that I've been feeling more and more than the only thing I have to hold onto my culture is food. Because the food encompasses everything. To further explain things - I'm Trinidadian. Everyone I know in my family is mixed. My first cousins are the most obvious, but my great grand parents were biracial and things do not solidify into one race as the generations lead down to me.

And I identify very strongly with the whole watching of chunks of heritage slip away. It's not the same at all, like hiding parts of oneself in order to survive as your family members have done. That's adding weight I can't even begin to break down. But I don't speak patois and I can't explain to people not from the Caribbean (it feels like at least) that that's a mother tongue even if it's the daughter of combined mother tongues...

My father mentioned to me recently how he walked into an Indian store here in the states and used the words he grew up with for the vegetables he needed and how they stared at him and ended up asking him where he learned those words, had he married an Indian woman? And he was left feeling 'But those are my words too'.

And then there are the times my father casually mentions some aspect of family history and I go into instant denial because it feels like even talking about it is appropriation.

Yeah, I seriously hate even thinking about this. I didn't realize that at all until I read you.