This question drives my mother crazy. When I was in elementary school, my teachers would meet my mother at parent-teacher conferences. She would sit down with them, introduce herself, and they would fall in love with her British accent.
When she came home from the conferences, she'd tell me all the wonderful things my teachers said about me. (I loved going to school and learning. Could you have guessed that?) Then, she'd turn right around and tell me which grades were unacceptable. The fact that I got high 90's in English were wonderful, but how come I only managed an 87 average in Math. It was her way of getting me to work harder.
I remember how livid she became when she replayed her talk with any of my teachers. "Oh, I love your accent," she said telling me the teacher's words. "Are you from Jamaica?" Then a bit of a scowl would appear on her face. "They think Jamaica is the only island in the Caribbean," she'd reply. My mother is from Guyana, South America. A fact, she is very proud of. My father is from Barbados and also has a British accent.
The problem with this question is that many islands make up the Caribbean. There's Haiti, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Kitts...I can go on. Frankly, most people know Jamaica because it has become a popular tourist attraction. Guyana gets added to the "Caribbean mix " because it's the only English-speaking country on the eastern coast of South America. Besides during the slave trades, people of African descent were dropped off there. Island people are proud of their country of origin and even prouder of how far they have come.
During my public school education, my teachers would ask me such crazy questions as "Why I didn't have a British accent?", "What do your parents did for a living?", and my personal favorite, "If my mother was from Ghana?" All the questions told me that my so-called educators weren't so educated. Even I knew at the age of 8 that Ghana was in Africa; Guyana is in South America. If I had given them a geography quiz, they would have failed.
At a recent book signing, a fellow writer and friend finally met my mother. I hadn't brought up my West Indian background to him. He came over and asked me what my mom was saying. Her British accent was working its mojo. He was so focused on her accent, he wasn't listening to her words. Then he asked me, "Is your mom, Jamaican?" I pulled him aside and said, "Please don't ask her that."
Posted By: Marsha Jones
Wednesday, November 18th 2009 at 7:47AM
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