And today I just booked my plane ticket to go to Jamaica to take part in a final farewell to my Uncle Frank: the scattering of his ashes in his hometown of Kingston. It will be my first trip to Jamaica as an adult, although my mother reminds me that I've been twice as a toddler (and that there are photos of me splashing about in Dunns River Falls--but of course I was 2 and have no memory of this whatsoever, although there is evidence in the form of photos). It will be a family reunion, of sorts, since several cousins and aunts/uncles will also be coming to help fulfill my Uncle's last request.
I do wonder about it--this last request of his--to be taken back to the place of his birth and his upbringing. He lived more of his life outside of Jamaica than inside it and, to the best of my knowledge, never seriously contemplated settling there after obtaining his degrees in North America (and certainly not after he started a family). I wonder about the tug of Jamaica on my Uncle--that he identified so intensely as Jamaican that he wanted his remains to be there instead of in the home he had known for almost 2/3 of his adult life.
My Uncle's allegiance and identification with Jamaica makes me think about my own conception of regional and national affiliation. I have already ruminated on this in the post "Proud to be an American" (sorry for so many cross-link listings!) but it does seem like this is the question I keep returning to: where is my national/regional/cultural allegiance and how strong is it?
For my Uncle, he would have told you that being Jamaican was in his blood (and he wouldn't have cared if you quoted anti-essentialist rhetoric at him). His license plate on his car read "rahtid," he cheered for the Jamaican soccer (excuse me, football) team every chance he got, the Jamaican flag and variations of it (the Jamaican colors of black, green and yellow) adorned his home, Reggae music (and I don't mean Bob Marley--no disrespect intended, but my family tends to scoff at Marley and think he's popular with non-Jamaican folk mainly) would blast from his car, and the foods he most craved were those of his childhood: stew peas, ackee with saltfish, and ox-tail.
My Uncle was proud to be Jamaican. And he never qualified it. He didn't say he was proud to be a Chinese Jamaican or a naturalized American-Jamaican-of-Chinese descent. For him, plain and simple, he was Jamaican.
I wonder what I will feel when I set foot there. Will I feel like I, too, am Jamaican, or at least part of a larger Chinese Jamaican diaspora? Guess I'll have to wait and see what happens next month.
