What counts as being “saved” by migration?

This columnist’s opinion, as with a lot of the opinions about “brain drain” circulating in the newspapers and airwaves, are entirely self-serving.  The proponents, none other than those who’ve emigrated and are invested in derailing any critical discussion about the entirety of immigrant experiences,  are fairly consistent.

They latch on to the “search for a better life” moniker, and collapse a whole bunch of historical periods and individual decisions and experiences together to present arguments like “I wouldn’t have been somebody if I hadn’t migrated.”    Or, as Moyston has: “We [referring to who exactly?] exported crude lumps of clay; these were shaped by exposure, experience into incisive, creative tools – politicians, opera singers, academics, train drivers, welders all with a sense of social justice.”

I have not heard such insulting and colonized language in a long time. That alone makes the case to dismiss anything else he has to say, just on the basis of its accuracy.

Notice from the ongoing commentary how it’s not working-class people living proud working-class lives in their working-class communities in their adopted countries who are on this “brain drain is good” wagon to glory. Indeed, Jamaican immigrants who are living hand to mouth, barely eking out a living after decades of relocating, and whose children are doing pretty much the same thing their parents were – except it’s called another name and includes more technological devices than their parents needed – don’t exist in the eyes of those who can’t see beyond their lint-free belly buttons. (If they had not migrated, that bellybutton would be full of enough dirt to compete with a yam hill!)  And if one questions the tightly sewn narrative of “success is impossible in Jamaica”, then the conversation quickly devolves, always beginning from the “I” and extending outward.  To wit: to say that brain drain is a problem is to say that “I” shouldn’t have had the opportunities that I did, and that my parents were supposed to stay and suffer, etc. etc. etc. etc. and that I shouldn’t have gotten a job that pays whatever, and a wife and house and land and car, etc. etc. etc. etc.

I often wonder what’s the point of talking about some of these pressing issues that all Jamaicans seem to think they are experts on? For this reason, I sometimes wonder why we bother to have schools and universities…there’s no point since everybody knows how to solve everything, right?

My more considered response:

The author is self-consciously presenting a skewed perspective to justify his own existence and that of the other types of he values.   It is a profoundly conservative argument that takes absolutely no account that the reasons and mechanisms for migration have changed over time, and how successive Jamaican gov’ts have adjusted the investments they’ve made in the social infrastructure with the expectation that people will migrate at a certain rate, and even to use gov’t and taxpayer resources to *encourage* migration in order to not deal with their profound incompetence and lack of interest in correcting the growing economic inequality in the society.

They even have the unmitigated gall to have now seized on the term “remittances” to continue encouraging people to leave, by intimating that, in a way, the country will better off when certain people leave and send back money, while other types of people are invited in.   And now blaming the state of the economy on “brain drain” as if they really do understand what that means, how to account for it and how their current actions are facilitating such.

Any policymaker who is so clueless as to think there won’t be unintended consequences from seeking easy answers in “remittances” or not recognising that there’s a direct relationship between focusing national resources and reorienting people’s psychologies to think entirely in terms of “foreign investment” promoting “seasonal work” while simultaneously complaining about “brain drain” needs to go back to primary school.

There they would learn that if you pour water into an already full tub, the water will spill over. So unless you know exactly how much was in the tub already, and how much you poured in, you can’t know exactly how much spilled. Unless you put the tub into a larger container, you won’t be able to catch all of what spills over. And if you do it on a hot day, you won’t capture as much of the overspill as on a colder day.

You get the analogy.

Like water, people will find their way through whatever crevice or crack there is to some other condition of living: sometimes those routes lead them to illicit activities and jail, even when they had the choice to go to college and get that fancy job.

That much overused and now trite “search for a better life” looks far different for:

*someone whose brother or sister sponsors them, and they leave their family and children behind with the intention to see if “they can make a change” in time to allow their children to finish high school

*to someone who’ve benefited from the hard work of their parents to finish high school, get a clerical job, but always wanted to do something else that they couldn’t imagine how to access, and the luck of having someone tell them or their parents that they can apply to universities anywhere in the world, and the rest is history

*from someone whose parents had a definite idea of a future for themselves and their children that lay outside of Jamaica, got enough education to make their way into a secure government or private sector job, saved and worked, migrated at the first opportunity, did whatever they could so their children could be called doctor, lawyer, accountant, etc. and never looked back except to say see, “anybody who wants it can have it”

*those whose parents have left perfectly good jobs or no jobs at all but felt that if they migrated they could do better, and whose children spend all their time around others who are always talking about migration and who thought that’s what you are supposed to do the minute that you get the chance, even if it’s in the middle of the school year, and so spend all their days counting down when they will leave, so even when their parents send them to UWI, UTech etc. they never really try hard enough to do or be anything and think that the education and the place is 2nd rate anyway, because they believe they “will travel soon”, and ‘soon’ doesn’t always happen exactly when they plan, or how they want, and so they spend however long trying to figure out how to leave, or at least to live the lifestyle that they imagine one must have if one eventually migrates…

*those who take long leave from their jobs, who claim they are going on holiday, never return until they have “straightened themselves out” and proceed to cultivate the notion that “farrin is best” when they visit, but when they’re in farrin they can’t stop saying “no wheh nuh betta dan yaad”

*those who go through every possible channel to leave because they believe and know that they can’t become anything else or more than they are if they stay, and who manage to get to farrin, sweat, stew and struggle and manage to eke out a decent living, sometimes happy, sometimes not, send their children to school, some of whom manage to do something boastworthy with themselves – from nursing aides to doctoral studies to real estate business – some of whom don’t.

There are variations on each scenario, but the basic formula doesn’t change.

The kind of human capital lost varies across time. Without actual data, there’s no way to make any claims about the positive or negative effects of “brain drain”. So far, the net effects are generally negative when it comes to the focus of policymaking and the intransigence on both gov’t and private companies in promoting merit-based access to opportunities among Jamaicans.

So, to evaluate the past and present state of the economy based on a convenient aggregation of individual choices based on nothing but impressions (selected ones at that) and which, if you just scratch the surfaces, are not always driven or directed by the same stimulus nor produce the same outcomes, is just plain mischievous.  There’s enough partial, half-baked, politically motivated analysis out there already. These columnists need to contribute something of value that will inform the conversation, or stay quiet until they figure out what needs to be said.

My Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has become my favorite holiday, especially now that I haven’t been able to spend Christmas in Jamaica for several years. The sheer joy of engaging in this ritual feast by preparing foods that are time-honoured favorites makes it very special for me. It’s a ritual that almost every American household is engaging in at the same time. Thanksgiving jumpstarts my holiday cooking routine, which will be punctuated by the Christmas fruit cake and pepperpot on New Year’s day.

Until I got to graduate school, I did not have any real understanding of Thanksgiving.  Before that, Thanksgiving was merely a brand new word in my vocabulary.   Up to then, it had meant eating dinner at my aunt’s house, which I didn’t exactly look forward to.  Otherwise, it was time to begin term papers and to catch up on reading for final exams.  Sure, I returned for the grand meal a few times during my college years.  But that was because of loneliness – everybody else was gone and I was alone in the dorms, so there was nobody to talk to.  It wasn’t because I relished the family get-together and looked forward to seeing family members who I hadn’t seen since the last Thanksgiving holiday.  By my senior year, guilt had started to kick in.  Since everybody else went home, shouldn’t I at least pretend to want to do the same?

It was during this time that I came to realize that there was an expectation – a strong one – that people traveled back to their homes to spend time with their families. I didn’t want to do that because I didn’t particularly like my family at the time.  Later on when I began to hear other people’s horror stories of having to endure this holiday with their families – in fact, I still hear the stories –  I began to understand that at least some of the feasting and gluttony taking place all across the United States on that day was really a way to block out undesirable emotions, or compensate for the decided absence of love and acceptance in a houseful of people related by blood and history.

At some point when they had both settled in northern Westchester, my mother and her sister decided to take turns hosting holiday dinners: My aunt took Thanksgiving because it meant she did not work the night before, and had the day to prepare the meal and eat dinner, after which she would leave for work (She was an obstetrical nurse at the county hospital, and worked at nights).  My mother got Christmas because she worked on the day shift at the same hospital, and usually requested to have the day off.  Since my aunt always worked on Christmas Eve night, she would be too exhausted to cook on Christmas Day.   Until my mother retired in 2009, this work/holiday shift had been sustained for over twenty years!  My mother and I usually prepared a couple of dishes that I knew I would be able to eat, just in case nothing else was to my liking.   Although my grandmother always roasted a turkey at Christmastime in Jamaica,  I had not warmed up to the idea of American turkey.  I was still laboring under the received notion that 1) Americans cannot cook to save their lives; 2) everything they cook came frozen, out of a can or box and with directions; and 3) they don’t season their food – salt and pepper was the extent of it.

The meal turned out not to be as bad as it could have been, I suppose.  But for a long time, these dinners – along with the anxieties of preparing it – were the only impression I had of Thanksgiving: the frozen turkey that didn’t defrost soon enough and was never cooked by the time we got there; the brussel sprouts that were overcooked, soggy and tasteless; the stuffing courtesy of Stouffers; the yams that came out of a can;  the signature cranberry sauce which appeared as a red cylindrical gelatinous solid which slid out of the can and plopped into a bowl where it was sliced thickly, and waited to be moved onto somebody’s plate. I kinda liked the cranberry sauce only after I had mashed it up with my fork to disguise the rings molded into its form by the container.   I survived off stuffing, whatever dish we brought – usually a ham or curried goat – and the yams, having done a last-minute rescue with pineapple or orange juice, cinnamon, brown sugar and some cornstarch.

Gourmet, November 1993

Around 1993, while I was in graduate school in Ann Arbor, I went to spend Thanksgiving at Susan and Sandy’s house, otherwise known as  “home for wayward lesbians”, which was located in Stockbridge, a small farming town in central Michigan.  I was one of several folks there who did not want to spend Thanksgiving with our families of origin.  It was here that I had an inkling that Thanksgiving didn’t need to be so canned or overcooked. The turkey was delicious, the cranberry sauce came from real cranberries, which I was seeing for the first time, the desserts were beyond divine. Just good food – well cooked, lots of love, no stress. Actually, I learned a lot from Susan about preparing good food. We were foodies together before there was such a term or identity. Susan was certainly witness to the first time I tried to churn my own butter – not intentionally of course. She asked me to whip the heavy cream for the cherry pie that we were making, but she never told me when to stop. So, butter it became. I make this pie every year now; it’s the official announcement that summer has arrived in our home. I suspect that Susan might have also mentioned Gourmet magazine to me, as one that I might have recipes that I would like. Well, the first Gourmet magazine I picked up in 1996 happened to be the November issue. That was the issue that introduced me to the idea of brining a turkey, and preparing a splendiferous apple pie with a single crust. Until the magazine folded last year, I was a regular reader. And, when my subscription lapsed as it would occasionally, I made sure that, at the very least, I purchased the November issue.

Gourmet, November 1996

For me, Thanksgiving is a profoundly American holiday. The history in which it is embedded – a rather violent and self-serving one at that – and ongoing efforts to sanitize that history, is what informs the main ingredients of most dinner tables on that day: a turkey, stuffing, green vegetables, corn, squash, cranberries. While these ingredients arrived primarily through successful mass marketing efforts by agro-producers, there is something about the configuration that changes very little. I appreciate that, I really do. That’s tradition: it changes in order to accommodate various tastes and interests, but the meaning remains the same.

Gourmet, November 1997

Experiencing the regional and ethnic variations in the thanksgiving feast has certainly helped me to accept that I could choose what I included and it would still be my Thanksgiving dinner, not somebody else’s. NPR did a wonderful story last year about the thanksgiving feasts prepared by chefs from various backgrounds.

The best turkey I have ever had – besides mine – was made by my uncle’s then-wife who is from Egypt. I visited them in Virginia in 1993. It was divine: so fragrant and stuffed with an assortment of finely minced vegetables, dates, onions and who knows what else. It was hard to believe that this was the same turkey that was being perennially bad-mouthed.

Then, there’s the turkey prepared by my Haitian family: who knows how Marthe seasoned it, but it came out tasting like — Haitian food. Just enough pepper, a hint of cloves, and served with riz djon djon, lambi, potato salad, pen patate, etc.

At my partner’s family home in the Bronx, the usual suspects appear at this feast: baked chicken, rice and peas, curried goat, roast pork, potato salad, macaroni and cheese, sorrel and rum punch. And sometimes, the turkey.

So far, I have decided not to include any Jamaican dishes in my Thanksgiving dinner. I wanted this meal to be distinct from every other holiday and special event. I also wanted to use it as an opportunity to discover what else America has to offer in the way of food. For this, I choose to harvest from my stack of Gourmet magazines, and garnish the dishes with my own history.

Gourmet, November 1998

Gourmet, November 2000

I have to be honest: I feel like Thanksgiving is really a special bonding time between myself, the magazine and my kitchen.

Gourmet, November 2001

Of course, the dishes I prepare are informed by my own Jamaican cooking style. Thyme, allspice/pimento and ginger are applied quite liberally across the dishes.

Gourmet, November 2003

Gourmet, November 2005

Gourmet, November 2007

Last year, I actually allowed someone to help me prepare the meal: my mother. But usually, I do it all by myself, save a dish or two that specific people choose to make. Mostly, I prepare the dishes from memory. But each year I return to those well-thumbed food-splattered back issues to find one recipe that I had skipped over, had tried once many years ago or never at all.

Gourmet, November 2009

It will take a long time to exhaust all the variations. After that, maybe I will include a Jamaican dish or two.

This year, I prepared the smallest Thanksgiving meal ever. It was a drastically scaled-back version for three people, and had to be done within two hours. We spent the morning and early afternoon volunteering at the thanksgiving meal for LGBT elderly folks at the Center on Halsted.

This year’s menu:

* roast turkey breast seasoned with thyme/sage/parsley/orange zest/garlic butter
* ham with bourbon gingersnap crust
* butternut squash soup with chicken, carrots & dumplings
* green beans with shallots & figs
* roasted yams in orange juice, ginger & maple syrup
* cornbread/sage/sausage/cherries/walnut stuffing
* pumpkin chocolate tart
* poached pears with brandy
* cranberry cider
* lambrusco bianco
* sparkling apple cider

“Flatbush by Car”

Outline of a skit about a lesbian couple living in Flatbush. LW and I performed it at a talent show organized by Caribbean Pride, and held at the Audre Lorde Project in August 1999.  Feel free to add your own (experience?) version of content for both scenes!

Scene 1: Errands

Car alarm

–         no batteries

–         use key

–         knock on window

Car Confusion

–         dirty windshield

–         radio

Route

–         post office

–         dog food

–         overdue video

–         library books

–         stop by Auntie Dell; she say to stop by

Seatbelt

Bad driving

–         air conditioning

–         near accident with motorist

–         pot holes (cough)

–         stop sign – girl watching

–         air conditioning

Ambassadors

–         hail up friends

–         gossip session

Reach post office – park vs. double park

–End—

Scene 2: Red Herring

Switch drivers

Can I turn on the AC?

No- I smell stew peas.  You nuh smell it? That smell good, sah.  What we going to eat for dinner? I tired to eat macaroni…

I don’t know…probably red herring with something.  I saw a piece down there in the fridge

Silence….How long that piece of red herring in there now?

I don’t know.  It  no matter. It won’t go bad. pause. Right?

So, if you not sure, how you planning to cook it?  The thing in there so long it nuh have any smell anymore.  And is me you want to go eat that?

So come up with an idea nuh?  Is me one have to think of something to eat?  Chuups…

You feel for Chinese…

Kinda.

We have money?

No…plus we have to go back home to order, cause you know how them take long…

Pointing – Pull over so we can stop at the bank…you never hear what me sey? You just drive right pass the bank…

You nuh see the dollar van cutting me off…

And why we have to drive on Flatbush Avenue in big-big rush hour, anyway?  It’s like you choose the longest route with the most traffic….you can make a u-turn right here…

Where?

Here so…you drive right pass it – chuups.  Alright.  Yuh feel for saltfish and bakes?

No sah.  Is hit or miss.  The last time you buy it, it taste like the lady season it with kananga water.

But you never say anything when I gave it to you.

Nooo….

I don’t feel for no saltfish.  How about that fish?  From that jerk place?

What place?

The place down on Flatbush – near Parkside.

What place? Oh, but that nuh in the other direction.

So we can’t turn around?

Remember we have to go to Canarsie to go buy the car part, so we should just go….

But Canarsie is behind us!  Why we can’t go buy the car part tomorrow or something?

Well I want to do it today, since the repairman told me last week that I should bring it in this week so he could work on it.  That way, you can just go drop off the car in the morning.

What you mean drop off the car?  I have an appointment at 9 o’ clock.

You have an appointment?  You didn’t tell me anything.  The car has to go in the shop, or we won’t get it back in time…

To do what?  We not going anywhere this weekend…

You forget?  We have to drive up to Albany to ….

To Albany?  For what?

To go take…stop acting like is the first time you hearing this – oh…

Uhm huh.

I never tell you.  I could swear I told you….

Uhm huh.  I’m hungry.  What we going to eat?

And that jerk place so dirty. And all them men up in there.  I don’t want to go all the way back down there and deal with that.

So what we going to eat then?

Silence

We have some smoked herring…

So, can I turn on the air conditioning, babe?

Yes.

The Final Departure

I call my mother to tell her about the intricacies and difficulties of making arrangements to have a body shipped to the Caribbean for burial.

She tells me that the way “they” do it here, she doesn’t like it at all.

They don’t want you to see them bury the body.

You know that green thing underneath, that’s what they use to cover up the dirt.

And you know what, the hole is not even deep.

No, “we” have to see the body go down.

They won’t let you see them bury the body.

The hole is not deep, and they don’t line the vault with concrete the way ‘we’ do –

I don’t like it, they just throw dirt in your face.

Can you imagine? No sah!

At funerals I have gone to here – only 2 or 3 – we were determined to stay and watch till they finish – because “we” have to see the body go down in the ground, and they cover it up, and then we go home.

The men get very upset because we want to stay, they tell us we have to move back, and move back, and we have to be a certain distance before they can start, so we just move back to where they tell us and stay right there, and they say move back some more, and we move back and stand up right there till they finish.

Because you know ‘we’ have to sing the sankey till they close up the vault.

That’s when we leave.

And not a second before.

December 31, 1999

Whose Culture is it Anyway?

I don’t remember why I wrote this, but I am saddened that it still speaks to the current moment. Much has changed – in both directions – so I remain hopeful.

It has become quite commonplace to hear someone from the Caribbean will say “it’s against [name an island nation ] culture to be gay” or “that’s a foreign thing, we don’t have that here.”

And it is also very difficult to come up with a response to that kind of argument.  Where do you start?  How do you begin to sift through the values that you have taken for granted as “Caribbean” or “West Indian”, to find the one thing that may be affirm your sexuality?  How do you say that I am Caribbean and Lesbian without being considered a strange cookie? If it is illegal in the Caribbean to be gay, how can you [willingly] be both at the same time? Strange cookie indeed…

Within the past year, Jamaica, along with several Caribbean and African countries have taken public stances against homosexuality as a “contamination” of the local culture.  Indeed, the idea that a gay identity is a “foreign import” strikes a bitter chord, because indeed, where has much of the organizing been happening around sexual identity? Certainly NOT in our backyards.  These sentiments have long laid dormant, or have been cemented into laws and social policies of these countries so that it is taken for granted that “we are illegal.”

It is quite a shock – a bitter pill to swallow – as we have stood by and watched these arguments take on new life and take center stage in the backlash against lesbians and gays in the Third World organizing against the conditions that oppress us daily.   Much of that organizing has been both a protest against the ways “culture” is used to malign and misrepresent us, as well as the violence – physical, economic  and political – that is waged against us to deprive us of basic social rights, including the right to speak out against the conditions which make it unsafe for us to be fully human.

Why should we organize? Because, in Audre Lorde’s words, we were never meant to survive.   Because to make change, only “we” can do that. When we organize, we use our collective voices to make positive change.  We are responsible for what we believe.  And if some members of our society are being unjustly victimized, then we have the responsibility to address that.  Not to say, well that’s just how it is, or always has been.  Can we see another way that is more fair, that is more just? I think we can. I think we must.

March 10, 1999