Sylvia Wynter's Dream

Put your tongue between your teeth. You move your mouth as if you are heavily sedated with local anesthetics, perhaps street cocaine. I try, I have a heavy tongue that does not do much lifting. You know this because so is your mom’s, my grandma’s. I was punished for you raising me in an environment you are ashamed of. My thumbs smeared the pages on each side. I was not usually afraid of you, but you paid keen attention to certain representations. Therefore, knees straight, elbows pressed at the sides of my stomach, and my eyes up for frequent breathing visits. As my words formed a line, the steam from your breath hovered over them like principal Trunchbull, ready to tear anyone that was out of line, so that they followed proper order and responded to protocols. You would think you would have allowed me to act accordingly, you know? A place and a time, but for you, it was every time.

You made my cousins and me strangers because they rarely acknowledge ‘th’ and ‘er’ sounds. You acted like you were an acclaimed citizen because you were the first of your generation to have a dictionary or something, and for such, from your generation down, there must be scholarship, discipline, and exemplary speech among your heir who is born to the succession of proficient language. The thing is, people who are ‘pure-blooded’ do not act the way you do because they are fully aware of their origins and culture. I see everything attached to my culture as being uprooted from already fertile land and transported under clustered and dreadful conditions in mass unethical production over the Caribbean Sea, and then clamped into a foreign land without the necessary nutrients and resources and still being able to grow, survive, and be prosperous. Mi is a bawn Jamaican, and mi proud fi chat patwa. I hear speech as what is said and not how it is said. My children will inherit my native tongue without feeling like a commoner. Whether we live on Jamaican soil or in a foreign territory, my future kids will know the history of their language and will be granted the privilege of switching whenever they desire.