excerpt from an artist fellowship I applied to

We don't have a family home. In a way. we’re family of migrants.

My father left Guyana. My mother left St. Kitts and Nevis. They met at college in Trinidad and Tobago, got married back in Guyana but had me back in St. Kitts. I arrived in Chicago during a snowstorm on Christmas Eve 1978.

My brother and I both loved growing up Houston, but we both left after high school. I went to school in Florida. He went to school in Georgia but, he’s never leaving Atlanta. After nine years in Brooklyn, I moved to Los Angeles. And now after 15 years, I’m in Mexico for the summer...or so I say. 

I’ve had the pleasure of returning to Guyana and St. Kitts to see the scenes from my parents’ childhood stories and the privilege of being on the continent in the year of the return. 

I spent my first night in Lagos exchanging currency in the parking lot at the Ecko Hotel. (Very proud of that.) My first day of 2020 was spent on a rooftop of a hotel in Accra, in a crowd of Black people speaking more languages than I could understand. It was one of the best days of life. The vibration of the moment held both comfort of the familiar and the excitement of the unknown.