Feeling Chinese Jamaican

This is going to be my last post in my "Jamaica" series. There's still a lot I am processing, but I may just pull the "classic" academic move and save it for an article. Truthfully, I would like to write about my experiences in a more formal way--as well as write about the Chinese Jamaican diaspora, so whether I return to this topic on this blog, or not, I know it is a subject I'll continue to write about, in some form, later.

But I want to return to the question that my cousin asked of me (twice) and that I have been asking about myself, probably for as long as I can remember:

Am I Jamaican? Do I feel Jamaican?

Or perhaps more specificaly:

Am I Chinese Jamaican...do I feel Chinese Jamaican?


Yes, when I was touring around Kingston with my family. For example, in the above photo, we went by the Catholic boy's school St. George (which is now co-ed) that my uncles (all 6 of them) attended. And seeing all these places and having my various relatives share their memories about living in Jamaica, made me feel very connected to this place.


And when we all climbed up Dunn's River Falls together, as touristy as this is, it is also wonderfully fun and is something that locals also do from time to time (in fact, there is a separate "locals" rate, which my Uncle "N" got for us, but the non-accented members of the family (including yours truly) were under strict instructions not to speak until we were past the checkpoint).


Perhaps most of all, it was the meals we shared that made me feel connected to my family and to being Chinese Jamaican. Food, and more specifically, the times that made us gather together as a family around food, is always what I associate with being Chinese Jamaican. The photo above is of a jerk place in Ocho Rios that we were taken to by a local friend (that's the back of my cousin "A's" head in the photo--"A" wanted me to mention him in my blog, and I told him that while I try to keep this pseudonymous and didn't want to include family photos, I figured only those nearest and dearest to "A" would recognize the back of his head, and he'll enjoy his very small moment of fame in this blog).

When "W" asked me in Montego Bay whether my ideas of being Chinese Jamaican had changed after a week in Jamaica--whether I felt any closer to being Chinese Jamaican, I told him that while I really didn't feel connected to the island in and of itself (for that I'd need to either go back in time or spend a lot more time living in Jamaica, preferably Kingston), the moments when I felt most strongly connected, when I feel Chinese Jamaican, are moments spent in the company of my family. And really, I didn't need to go to Jamaica to figure this out. This has always been the case. I felt it when I went to Toronto for my cousin's wedding. Or during my Uncle's memorial service in California. Or even just talking to family members on the phone. I may not completely identify as Chinese Jamaican, but the majority of my family does. And above race and gender and a host of other "identity" factors, there is that--there is my family connection and identification. And we are a very mixed bunch, living in various part of the Americas over the last century. And so, yes, at the end of the day, I feel like a part of my family, which means, I do feel and am Chinese Jamaican.

Multiracial Jamaica?

So one of the things that surprised me about Jamaica, specifically Kingston, where my mother and her siblings were born and raised, is that it wasn't nearly as multiracial as I thought it would be. My idea of Jamaica/Kingston as this multiracial space has a lot to do with my family, but it also has to do with reading on-line copies of The Jamaica-Gleaner (newspaper) and reading a novel, Margaret Cezair-Thompson's The True History of Paradise: a Novel.

[By the way, this is a good time for a book plug for Cezair-Thompson's novel. A friend-colleague of mine gave a fascinating conference presentation and since it was right before my trip, I went out and bought it and read it and found that it was not only engaging, but also provided an interesting narrative about the political change that Jamaica was undergoing between 1960-1975 as it changed from a colonial state to an independent nation. For more on Cezair-Thompson, click here for her personal website]

Anyway, what I found throughout Jamaica was that aside from the tourists, locals appear to be black Jamaicans, with a few shopkeepers and grocery store clerks who are Indian and Chinese. Our driver, Errol, who drove us from Kingston to Ocho Rios and then around Ocho Rios sight-seeing, claims that 95% of the grocery stores owned in Jamaica are by the Chinese. And while I don't know how accurate his statistics are, certainly anecdotally it appears to be true since the few groceries we went into were, indeed, owned and staffed by Chinese Jamaicans and, historically, this would make sense since Chinese in Jamaica comprised a middle-man economy of shopkeepers.

But in and around Kingston and Port Royal, away from tourist centers, Jamaica appeared to be comprised of mainly black-Jamaicans--at least that's what I "saw." Yet, my cousin "W" saw something different--to him, he noticed much more mixture; he commented on people having "Chinese" eyes and seemed to discern between white Jamaicans and white tourists in Ocho Rios more readily than me.

When I mentioned to "W" that I was expecting to see a more multiracial Jamaica, he said that his idea of Jamaica, growing up and upon his return, was that it was a predominantly black nation, but that it was also a multiracial nation--that there had been so much race mixing, because of the legacy of British colonialism, that while currently "black" Jamaicans are more apparent to the naked eye, the truth is that Jamaicans don't just think of themselves this way--that the way that we talk about race in the U.S. is not how people in Jamaica talk about race. Or at least not the way that "W" and his family think about it.

And the truth is, I did experience a multiracial Jamaica. For example, the family friends and my family's family are all very mixed: "W's" aunts and cousins (mixtures of Indian, Chinese, black, and white) and my Uncle "N" who married into our family has family who is still in Kingston and at a dinner at his parents' home there was a mix of what looked like, black, Indian, and Chinese people, all part of his family, all local Jamaicans.

So while I may not have seen evidence of a multiracial Jamaica on the streets, in people's homes I met plenty of people who were multiracial Jamaicans, and perhaps more importantly, my own family seemed to be evidence that the idea of a mixed-race Jamaica is alive and well.

Locals vs. Tourists

I'm not terribly well traveled, but I have to say that the few times I've found myself in what I'll call typical "tourist" spots (and I guess I'm thinking of places like Key West, Cozumel, old Athens around the Acropolis) I find there is this odd tension between wanting a place to be "authentic" and to have people experience the culture as either part of its local charm (the relaxed atmosphere of the keys), or something exotic (the Mexican Caribbean flavor of Cozumel) or part of an ancient past (old Athens) with trying to SELL you this image--the vendors that swarm around you and hawk wares at you in these places.

I found this to also be true in Jamaica, at least in the more "touristy" spots that we visited in Ocho Rios and Montego Bay. The places we went to in Kingston and Port Royal weren't places many tourists would go to (or any really because so many people are told how violent Kingston is, we didn't see a whole lot of tourists, or at least not American toursits, hanging out in Kingston--we did find some German and Australian and black American tourists, but aside from a few businesspeople, no white American tourists). But Ocho Rios is THE major cruise ship destination in Jamaica, and Montego Bay is THE airport that tourists fly into, either to stay or to head to Ocho Rios or Negril (there are 2 major airports in Jamaica, Kingston and Montego Bay and basically you fly into Kingston for business or because you have family--if you are a tourist, you stay on the north shore and fly into Montego Bay, which is literally on the opposite end of the island (North West vs. South East) from Kingston).

And the problem for me was feeling like I was a tourist but also not a tourist. Actually, I didn't have a problem with being a "tourist" in certain places, because I don't have family here and didn't grow up here and because as a relatively privileged American, I do have an income that allows me to travel and stay at nice hotels and not worry about eating out (and unfortunately for the Jamaican dollar, the exchange rate was 70JMD to 1 US). But the rest of my family wanted to be treated as locals--especially for my cousins who were born and to some degree raised in Jamaica (the oldest among them left when he was 7) they were pretty offended, at times, to be mistaken for tourists and insisted on being given "local" rates--or poked fun of those "other" tourists who didn't know that there were 2 rates or who didn't know where to get the authentic Jamaican food (this we did in one case by going into the town of Port Royal versus eating at the hotel restaurant).

But despite my cousins telling me not to, I continually overtipped wherever we went, left money in the hotel for the cleaning staff, and didn't try to bargain too much for the few souvenirs I picked up. Is it my overengaged sense of class privilege? Is it because I KNOW that I can't pass as a local (my family were continually joking that I should keep my mouth shut in certain places because while most of my cousins have Jamaican accents and can speak patois, I can't, so I'd be a dead giveaway)?


[I got this photo from the internet--it shows some typical tourist shops in Montego Bay]

The truth is, I'm not a local. There was so much of Jamaica that seemed very touristy to me--packaged for people who wanted a comfortable "Island" experience--but there was also a sadness, for me, to go to a crafts area and be bombarded with people who were shouting, "Miss, Miss, come look at my stall" and to see stall after stall of these trinkets and wooden souvenirs and the colors of the Jamaican flag splashed everywhere and to have these people vying for your attention to sell you something to take back to put on your coffee table. Part of me wants to say that this isn't the "real" Jamaica. But you know, it is. People selling trinkets IS part of the real Jamaica. People urging you to come into their shop--to try to sell you something--the need to sell you something--that is part of the way that Jamaica operates as a country utterly dependent on tourist dollars.

As much as I wanted this trip to be about a type of "homecoming," I am a tourist. As much as I have family who grew up here, I'm not accepted as a Jamaican--not at least without a lot of explaining, and it was one of the things that did make me feel my difference from the people who grew up and lived in Jamaica--at the end of the trip, I left with my blue passport.

"Hello Mrs. Chin!"

Years back, when I lived in Western Massachusetts, there was a Jamaican restaurant I went to all the time--really a take-out joint with 4 formica tables. My parents came to visit once, and I took them there and when we got to the counter the owner, a woman I'd seen countless times, looked up at my mother and said "Hello Mrs. Chin!"

This is not my family's surname--but it is what all Chinese in Jamaica are called--Mrs. Chin, Mr. Chin, Chinee people, Chinee--variations thereof.

This my mother explained after we left the shop. She was actually tickled pink to be called Mrs. Chin--to be reminded of a practice that she had grown used to as a young girl. None of my relatives ever thought this was offensive--it was simply what they were called. Of course, I think that there are a few qualifications. I think that it was black Jamaicans who generally referred to Chinese Jamaicans as "Mrs. Chin" and not white Jamaicans (although I could be wrong about this).

And throughout my stay in Jamaica, I did encounter this practice along with my cousins and other family members. At one restaurant, a waiter gestured to our table and asked another server if he would bring menus to the "China people." At Dunn's river falls, a local guide smiled warmly at me and said, "How are you doing Mrs. Chin?" -- which took me a minute to realize that he was talking to me, but I smiled back and told him I was fine. And in meeting one of my cousin's second cousin's, a young boy of 7 who did not favor the Chinese side of the family, he looked dubiously at all of us and asked his grandmother if my cousin could really be related to him because he looked like a "Chinee" person.

And oddly enough, none of this bothered me. I freely admit that if I had been in the U.S. and this had happened to me--if an African American man had called me Mrs. Chin or talked about a group of us as "China people" it would have rankled me to no end. But in Jamaica? Having heard that this was the experience of my family, seeing that this continued, and understanding a bit about the complicated racial hierarchies and dynamics of the nation, it just didn't bother me.

Is it a lack of malice--because I never sensed any in the comments? Was it my own "go with the flow" mentality--when in Rome, after all? Or is it the pick your battles issue--I mean, how would I begin to explain that this practice, begun probably a century ago, was stereotypical or potentially demeaning and confusing to not only Chinese but Asian visitors/residents (because lets face it, not only Chinese end up in Jamaica).

I'm not exactly sure what to make of this issue--the kinds of analyses I would apply here in the U.S. don't seem to adhere in the same way in Jamaica. I had several conversations with my cousin "W" on these issues, any many others, during our time there. "W" was born in Kingston, lived there until he was 3 and has made several trips back. Unlike my mother's side of the family (his father is my mother's brother), "W" still has his maternal side in Jamaica--his cousin "T" picked us up from the airport and we visited with his aunt "P" in a Kingston suburb, Portmore. "W"s family is very mixed--in addition to the "Chinese" flavor of my uncle, his mother's side brings together white, Indian, and black cultures, reflected to a large degree to the varying complexions and phenotypes of his many cousins.

Anyway, I'm going to end now. There's a lot more to be said and to mull over on this and many other topics. If you hadn't already guessed, this week I'm dedicating my blog posts to musings on my trip to Jamaica, on my thoughts of being Chinese Jamaican, and perhaps most importantly, on re-thinking the meaning of mixed race America if we open up the space of "America" beyond the borders of the U.S. to places north (like Canada, which is where most of my extended Chinese Jamaican family lives) and south to the Caribbean.

"Once you go to Jamaica, you know Jamaica"

Hello "Mixed Race America" readers--I have returned from my trip to Jamaica, and I'm not sure where to begin. I feel like I could write a week's worth of posts based on the things I saw and the experiences I had, and which I'm still digesting and mulling over.

Interestingly enough, the day after I returned, I saw a commercial sponsored by the Jamaican tourism board that showed images of happy American tourists (or perhaps I should say "white" tourists who may be from Canada, the U.S., Europe, Australia, or New Zealand) amidst verdant landscapes and beautiful waterscapes, much like this image below (which I found on the Jamaica tourism website):



[The thing about this image is, yes it is a classically "tourist" image of Jamaica, but there truly ARE scenes like this--lush scenes of jaw-dropping beauty, it will make your heart ache]

The commercial showed various tourists enjoying vacation-related things that one will find in Jamaica: reggae, steel drum, fishing, dancing, frolicking in the water and on sandy beaches, all with a cover of Bob Marley's "One Love" playing in the background and a tagline that reads: "Once you go to Jamaica, you know Jamaica."

And this is the question I have been asking myself, even without seeing this commercial: now that I've been to Jamaica, do I feel more Jamaican? This is the question my cousin posed to me on both the first and last day of my trip there: do I feel Jamaican? Have I found the missing piece of the puzzle I've been searching for? Do I now, know, what it means to be Chinese Jamaican?

I can't give a simple answer to any of these questions--and I will be writing more about this in future posts. But for now I will say this: I have gone to Jamaica and I do feel, now, in a way much different than before, that I do know Jamaica in a way that I never did before.

Leaving for my mother's land

Tomorrow I leave for Kingston, and I am anxious. First of all, I hate to fly (the noise, the cramped quarters, the disequilibrium). But really, I am not sure what I will find. For so long, Jamaica has loomed in my imagination, but in a way different from what people probably imagine.

My guess is that many people have one of these two images in mind when they think of Jamaica (or perhaps they have both).


THE RESORT



THE SHANTYTOWN

But my own idea of Jamaica based on the stories of my mother and other relatives, is more prosaic than this, and is rooted in the past--a Jamaica of the 1950s and 1960s rather than the present day Jamaica (most everyone left in the mid-1970s in my family).

Which means, I suspect that the Jamaica of my family is more in line with this image:


This is a picture of north Kingston. It probably looks like a lot of places in the world. And I think that's the point. My family lived a fairly middle-class existence. They weren't rich but they could afford to send all the kids to Catholic school. They had a home that had chickens and goats and other animals and they killed these animals for food. And my grandfather was a baker who woke up at 4am (and my mother had to be up at 5am to open the gate for my grandfather) everyday.

Although both my parents are immigrants and part of a larger Chinese diaspora, my mother's immigration from Jamaica rather than China places her, culturally and until her naturalization, nationally, in a different position than my father. I grew up for a long while believing I was Chinese Jamaican. I stopped using that as a "label" to describe myself while in college because I started to think differently about race and ethnicity and culture.

But now that I've become someone immersed in these issues, I'm not sure how I feel about being Chinese Jamaican American. I suppose my reluctance in claiming this identity is partly the fatigue of having to explain this background--and especially in grad school, I didn't want to exoticize myself or my family--and that's what tends to happen when I mention that my mother was born and raised in Kingston. People get really interested because it seems like such an anomaly to have Chinese in Jamaica. Whereas for me, this is just my family, and I don't always want to turn my family into a "story" just as, I'm sure, they don't want me to turn them into a blog post or anecdote about how multicultural or multiracial we are.

And yet, as an academic, as someone interested in the construction of identities, I can't help but wonder what I will discover, not about Jamaica but about myself and my relationship to Jamaica and to my mother's past and to my family. I never wanted to go to Jamaica until I could go with family members who would be able to show me the Jamaica of their past. I didn't want to get stuck at a resort on the North shore--I wanted to see the country and experience it, as much as I could, the way my mother would have experienced it.

But at the same time, I know this is an impossibility. The passage of time, the changes in the nation, and my own distance from this culture--my own ignorance over Jamaican culture and customs, makes shadowing my mother's younger self impossible.

Still...I am curious and eager if anxious to discover what kind of relationship and memories, of my own, I will develop of Jamaica. I guess I'll just end by saying stay tuned, because I will end up writing about this when I return in a week.

Returning to Jamaica

Back in October, I wrote about my Uncle Frank (October 22, 2007) and the significant impact he had on my life, particularly as a mentor/role-model for me of an anti-racist activist. I also wrote about going back to California to attend his memorial service and being surrounded by my large extended family, who are part of the Chinese Jamaican diaspora (November 3, 2007).


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.

Chinese Jamaican Diaspora

If you closed your eyes at my aunt's house last night, you would have heard a cacophony of different accents: London British, Jamaican, Canadian, Japanese, Californian (or is that just the generic "American" accent?). All of these are people in my family--part of a larger Chinese Jamaican diaspora. As I've already mentioned before, yesterday was my Uncle's memorial service. It was a very emotional time, but it was also very celebratory--and it was one of the few occasions that has brought together my family from so many different regions. And really, as I sat at the kitchen table, listening to reggae music playing in the background, eating the leftover Chinese food from the memorial service dinner, watching family members play mah jong at one corner and Texas hold'em in another, I was struck by just how diverse all of us are: in our tastes, in our accents, in where we live, in what we do. And yet, we are all part of this thing called the Chinese Jamaican diaspora. Our skin tones range in color, from dark to light. Some of us (like my dearly departed Uncle) identified with Jamaica in his heart and soul to his dying day, some of us (myself included) haven't set foot in Jamaica since I was a toddler. And although a few of my relatives continue to tease me about how I can't possibly be Jamaican since I have an aversion to hot peppery food (I just can't take the heat!) there are times when I identify very strongly as a Chinese Jamaican. Certainly last night was one of those times.