I recently spent some time in one of my favorite countries: Dominican Republic. While there, I found myself filled with nostalgia. The island just has that affect on me and I spent a lot of time reflecting on the role it has played in my life. Several years ago, I lived in this beautiful country, and the experiences I had altered the trajectory of my life. Now, every time I go back, it’s as if my spirit anticipates the changes and adjustments the island has the power to spark in me.
When I moved to Cotuí at age 19, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into or what was coming ahead, I just knew that it was part of my spiritual walk through life and my work there would bring me closer to the Divine. What I did not foresee was everything I would learn that fell outside of my then narrow definition of spirituality, those things that would give me new perspectives on humanity and help shape how I would devote my life to changing the world in my own little way.
I grew up in a community with very few people who looked like me or shared my culture. But that’s not to say it wasn’t diverse. There were a lot of people who were just a generation or two removed from immigration, a lot of people whose ancestors’ lives and lands had been disrupted by colonialism and imperialism, a lot of people who used terms like “aliens” to describe human beings, and, of course, a lot of in between. Growing up in that context, I often thought about race, culture, and Blackness. However, the US has this uncanny ability to limit one’s perspective, especially when it comes to race, and living in the Dominican Republic as a young Black woman ripped my blinders right off.
Walking through the streets and talking to literally every stranger I saw in various cities, suburbs, and farm towns in the Dominican Republic taught me so much about race, diaspora, culture, and colonialism’s history and legacy. People perceived me so differently when I had limited Spanish compared to when I acquired that distinct Cibao accent; when my hair was in an Afro compared to in braids; when I was walking around with a white woman, a stereotypical looking “latina,” a Black woman who was a native Spanish speaker, or a Black woman who had limited Spanish. But the starkest and most impactful interactions for me happened when Dominicans perceived me as Haitian compared to when they found out I was American; and when Haitians perceived me as Haitian compared to when they found out I was Nigerian.
The world is grey, so there’s a lot of nuance here for which I don’t attempt to make broad generalizations. That said, when I lived in the Dominican Republic, I had experiences being targeted by authorities, followed by teenagers in the street, and having slurs yelled at me by small children. All racially motivated and all by Dominicans who many US Americans would perceive to be Black. I also had experiences where I was embraced by Haitian strangers because they recognized me as their diasporic sister from whom they had only been separated by a tragic history of transcontinental slavery, but family nonetheless.
There were also so many people who took the time to have deep, informative, and vulnerable conversations with me, people who embraced me as aplatana’, people who taught to me to speak like a Cibaeña, and people who taught me Creole.
These experiences opened my eyes to realities of race and Blackness that I had never before considered. They pushed me to challenge the paradigms I had accepted as a Black woman in the US, and they motivated me to learn more about my own history.
When I came back to the US, I kept learning. I studied discrimination and bias, race and sexuality, and human rights. I dove deep into the racial history of this hemisphere and how that history continues to perpetuate itself in diverse forms. I tried to understand people and the systems that influence us to love or hate each other. And do my best to use this knowledge for love and understanding.
Now, more than seven years after stepping foot on that beautiful island for the first time, I have this cool job where I get to study Blackness in the Americas while traveling the Americas. A few weeks ago I got to step back onto that magical island that started this journey. I watched the ocean pass along the highway, I climbed mountains, I killed insects with Baygon, I danced bachata on the street in front of a colmado, and, after months of being in a place where my Blackness garnered stares, I got to blend in.
With regard to Blackness and the diaspora, I did more reflecting than learning on this trip. But it was a much appreciated reminder that this work of discovering Blackness in all it’s languages, cultures, struggles, and traumas, and forging healing and connection, is a work in which I’m honored to participate.
Signed,
N.A.
Signed, N.A. 