One Family — East Flatbush
June is Caribbean American Heritage Month and we are celebrating by taking a peak into Dr. Brown’s ethnographic memoir, East of Flatbush, North of Love: An Ethnography of Home, a music-centered book that takes a look at growing up Caribbean American in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. This excerpt is from the first chapter of the book, “One Family—East Flatbush.” (Footnotes not included). Don’t forget to listen to the musical selections (“cues”), which can be found on the East of Flatbush Playlist on Spotify and YouTube.
Chapter 1: One Family — East Flatbush
Mom always says you should be proud of where you’re from. Because of this, I never liked when I’d ask some one where they’re from and they would say, “A little town outside of [enter some major city].” How is anyone going to know that your little town exists, that your people exist, if you don’t put it and them on the map? —Me
Cue: “Pretty Boy,” Prophet Benjamin
“Yuh hair look just like my own,” he said, approaching me as I waited impatiently for the B44 to arrive. The other bodies at the bus stop appeared content in their boredom, but this gentleman could not let the time pass without bugging some unsuspecting soul—me—for a bit of conversation.
I looked at his long, un-stylized, matted locks. He had some real Rastaman dreads, boi. He was well over six feet and his locks hung past his waist. He must have been growing them for a long time, because the ends—some of which were on the verge of dropping off—were a shade of brown far removed from the gray roots that sprung from his scalp. I had to chuckle. His hair was a far cry from the two-stranded twists that adorned my head. Granted, there was nothing fancy about my hairdo. (I was on my way to teach a piano lesson, not a wedding.) Yet, I couldn’t help but think to myself, “My hair does not look like yours.”
I don’t remember what I actually said to him, but it was something more polite. He then asked, “Trini?”
“Yeah. Born here, but Trini background. How yuh know?”
“Ah could hear it when yuh talk.”
He wasn’t Trini, but I couldn’t quite place the accent. Them small island accents can be tricky. Before I could ask him where he was from, the bus pulled up to the corner. We weren’t in a hurry to get on, so we let the more impatient ones make their way to the front of the bus. By the time we had gotten on, there weren’t any more seats, so we continued our conversation standing amongst the other Caribbean bodies on board.
As he towered over my five foot four inch frame, he told me he was from Grenada but that he had lived in Trinidad for several years, so he was quite adept at picking up a Trini accent. Honestly, I don’t remember much else about that conversation, but we continued making chit-chat until he got off of the bus a few minutes later. I stayed on. I was going all the way to Bushwick.
Bushwick was a long pull from where I’d begun my encounter with the Grenadian Rastaman. We’d met at the corner of New York Avenue and Avenue D in East Flatbush—a Caribbean outpost, literally in the middle of Brooklyn. Growing up, people here were mostly from various parts of the English-speaking Caribbean. Like Rastaman so astutely ascertained, my family is from the twin-island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, but others—like him—hail from elsewhere in the Caribbean, including Jamaica, Barbados, St. Vincent, and Grenada. There are folks from the mainland, too—immigrants from Guyana, and some Central Americans, primarily from Panama. If you live here, and you’re not a first or second-generation immigrant, you’re an anomaly.
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