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About the 'Jamaicanness' of Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris talks w/NYT about how she connects personal experiences to her professional life, the breakneck speed of the news cycle, the inspiration she takes from Bob Marley and more...
Who is a creative person (not a writer) who has influenced you and your work?
Certainly my mother. She was incredibly creative, as a scientist. But when I think about performers: Bob Marley. I first started listening to him when I was a child. My father had an incredible jazz collection but also a lot of Marley. I saw him in concert at the Greek Theater in Berkeley. I was hooked.
Jamaica’s history is actually not that well known in the context of the issues we deal with in the United States. But Jamaica grappled with vicious slavery for generations, and then colonists, with a very strong sense of identity in terms of what it meant to be particularly a black Jamaican. A lot of his music was about what it means to fight for the people. He was a very spiritual person also. I’m very spiritual. I don’t talk a lot about it, but the idea that there is a higher being and that we should be motivated by love of one another — that also requires us to fight.
interview: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/books/kamala-harris-book.html
"Hanging out with my family in Jamaica..." (Courtesy of Kamala Harris)
Donald Harris reflects in this essay on the ‘Jamaicanness’ of his daughter Kamala.
"As a child growing up in Jamaica, I often heard it said, by my parents and family friends: “memba whe yu cum fram”. To this day, I continue to retain the deep social awareness and strong sense of identity which that grassroots Jamaican philosophy fed in me. As a father, I naturally sought to develop the same sensibility in my two daughters. Born and bred in America, Kamala was the first in line to have it planted."
"From the start, I strived to retrace for my children the path on which I had traveled: from Miss Judah’s primary school at Top Road in Brown’s Town to Park School ‘Elementary’ just around the corner, to Titchfield High in Port Antonio, to University College of the West Indies (UCWI) then to Berkeley where Kamala was born, to Illinois where Maya was born, and subsequently to Cambridge University, Wisconsin, Yale, and Stanford."
"Throughout this retracing, my message to them, from the lessons I had learned along the way, was that the sky is the limit on what one can achieve with effort and determination and that, in this process, it is important not to lose sight of those who get left behind by social neglect or abuse and lack of access to resources or ‘privilege’; also not to get ‘swell-headed’ (a favourite expression and command of Miss Chrishy); and that it is important to ‘give back’ with service to some greater cause than oneself."
"In their early years, I tried to convey this message in very concrete terms, through frequent visits to Jamaica and engaging life there in all its richness and complexity. In Brown’s Town, we walked the streets during ‘market day’, chatted up the ‘higglers’ in the market and were rewarded with plenty of ‘brawta’ (Jamaican word for bonus offerings) in naseberries, mangoes and guinep after each purchase. We checked out the location of the old Park School which had become transformed into Brown’s Town Comprehensive High School, strolled into St. Mark’s Church and graveyard, and traversed the road up the hill to Orange Hill where my uncle Newton had taken over the family property and started a limestone mining and brick producing operation in addition to the cattle, grass, fruit and pimento farming of earlier times."
"Of course, in later years, when they were more mature to understand, I would also try to explain to them the contradictions of economic and social life in a ‘poor’ country, like the striking juxtaposition of extreme poverty and extreme wealth, while working hard myself with the government of Jamaica to design a plan and appropriate policies to do something about those conditions..."
read more: https://www.jamaicaglobalonline.com/kamala-harris-jamaican-heritage/
My granddaughter Meena, her aunt Kamala and me
51 replies
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" We need to see her long form birth certificate!!"
I'm in !!!!!!!!
