Phyars Burgess Reppin Trinidad and Tobago

HOW HAS YOUR BACKGROUND AFFECTED YOUR LIFE/ WORK?:

My parents both came to this country, in that around the way immigrant style, to give me a better life. Now that I'm old enough to fully, and I mean fully understand what they had to do to get here, and then stay here - in order for me to be born, I can say firmly, without wincing, I was indeed born in America - though I have been resentful of this many many times in my life. Growing up I, of course, fell in with some of the black kids that were around me, and I loved it, and I loved them, but I was always, culturally, a step or two behind. I'm black, I would never deny this or mince words about this, I'm black, it's beautiful and I love it. But on that horrifying boat ride over here from the motherland my peoples were dropped off at a place other than the USA and that made a difference. Not all of it, but some. So yes, we eat black eye peas at New Years but you'll find green seasoning and a scotch bonnet pepper in there. Your Mardi Gras is our Carnival, but you'll hear steel pan in our streets instead of horns. I don't say these things, to be different, but just to expand the narrative of what blackness is, what it looks like, and where it lives.