I am the child of a migrant settler’s daughter.
Afri-Carib-Brit. For three years, I have self-defined as Afri-Carib-British. Before that I was whatever felt sort of ok with my spirit with bureaucratic tick boxes. It was crude self- identifying, however, official art as and cultural reports require Equal opportunity forms to be filled, and I am an Artist.
As it is Black history Month in the UK, I am reflecting on this journey to how I title my identity. African Caribbean British.
Afri – being of African blood ancestral descendancy.
Carib – being of Caribbean heritage. Not so simple to outline in a nutshell, but I will try. My cultural inheritance is that of the Caribbean isles. More specifically St Kitts & Nevis. This entails a bloodline that survived the transatlantic human-trafficking and chattel enslavement of Africans from 1400’s to 1800’s.
Whilst their bodies would have been in a state of trauma and survival activated cultural production, my Peoples would have made a life for themselves, their families and communities. They would have also embraced allies from other backgrounds. They would have evolved culture to thrive during and after the abolition of the trading of Africans and the end of the slavery in the Caribbean.
They would have gathered the plurality of African culture hidden, and revealed its self-awareness in its craftsmanship, agricultural growing practices, the arts, family mores and storytelling. They transmuted and secretized this unique global history British and European experience of societal order and religiosity, and birthed new societal and spiritual traditions of their own. Everything that helped Africans survive and thrive in the Caribbean during and after the slave trade is in the blood and DNA of this, my body.
Prefixes and Affixes I have a British Isle migrant settler experience, and I refer to Britain as a geo-cultural location, as a birthplace. Born elsewhere, I would have defined as relevant to that location. For example, Afri-Carib-French. Afri-Carib-Italian. Afri-Carib-Japanese. The last affix relates purely to the experience of migrant settlement. The previous two are my blood inheritance, my birthright and DNA.
The Fathers and the Mothers
Carib
I have a grandfather, now deceased, who is from St Kitts and a Grandmother, also deceased, who is from Nevis. Two islands next door to each other in the archipelago that is the Caribbean. This Grandfather landed Tilbury in 1952. ‘Sent for’ – fetched – my Mum without her Mother in 1956, aged 12. That separation lasted 60 years. They were reunited in 2009 we found her living in Bromley, South London. It was a surreal journey to finding her and that tale is for another blog.
Americas - 2023
In July 2023, found my own Father after a 54-year separation. He is dearly departed now, aged 77, and died on 10th December 2023. My Father was an African American Airforce Serviceman who met my Mother in 1968. His Dad had died aged 39 years young, when my Father was 17 years old, during yet another era of it being difficult to be poor working class and black in America. Especially without a father. It was the year Dr Martin Luther King was taken from his family and the African American civil rights movement in St Louis, where my father was born and raised.
The military services in 60’s America was a secure means of employment. He met my mother as a GI in London, UK, seeking out entertainment in music, dancing and where other ’Black Folks’ might be.
However, being in the American Air Forces, meant a tournée to Vietnam for my Father. Being posted to Alaska afterward sealed our 54-year separation in 1969.
I turned 55 this year, 2024 and, my father’s presence has always been with me, I felt. Our separation seemed final. However, I knew I would find him; through what means I didn’t know. Ancestry.com was the way forward to this discovery.
Where my bloodline is from according to Ancestry.com and in no particualr order: Nigeria Senegal Benin & Togo Ivory Coast Ghana Indigenous North Americas Cameroon Ireland Mali Central Nigeria Central West Africa Western Bantu Peoples Norway The Baltics.
The 158 consecutive days between 4th July 2023 and 10th December 2023 is significant moment in time. I met him in person once. We spoke briefly on the phone a few times. I made a poetry film I made about some of the grieving I have done for his passing. Also, for our relationship, and what we had both hoped for.
Trans-borders In an age where we speak of borders not just being geographical, but also socio-cultural, socio-psychological, emotional and physiological, self-definition is a crucial component to personal sovereignty and self-recognition. Healing fractured familial bloodlines, gives me a new internal landscaping. I can name I have locations to journey towards and to move from.
As an ancestral bloodline inheritance definer, I am African Caribbean American British.
Today.
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