Portrait of the Artist....
I have always wondered about this picture. It was one of the last ones taken before I left Haiti, so I imagine it was for Carnival 1981 or so. As I grew older, I wondered what my parents thought when they received this photo and others like it in the mail in New York. One of the more perplexing things about my initial journey to the states was seeing photos of me in my parents' NY album, the same photos that riddled my grandparents albums in Haiti. It was if I had a life--a doppleganger even--in NY that I had no idea existed. When Claudette and Francy received these photos did anyone ever tell them about how I fussed going to the photographer or all the prodding it took to get me sit still.
Coming to NY and discovering images of myself in a family album of a family that I did not know gave me a certain double-consciousness. I couldn't understand why I needed two lives, one in New York and another in Haiti when the one in Haiti suited me just find. Did I really need a dad when I already had "Papa?"
My parents album was a beta version of facebook-littered with images of friends and connections who I did not know. Even the familiar faces, such as my aunts and uncles from Haiti, seemed unfamiliar. Is that how we looked?
There are any number of relatives that I wish were still around for me to meet and get to know better, but there has never been anyone in my life who I have yearned to meet and greet more than the young man standing in this picture. I often ask myself whatever became of the young man in that album resting in Petion Ville.
F
Ferentz
2 Comments
Reader Comments (2)
i totally get it. funny thing, immigrating or just the process of moving. on the one hand, youre still where you are. haiti, your home, your apartment, wherever it is that youre moving from. on the other hand, there's already parts of you elsewhere, be it new york, your new apartment, or wherever it is youre moving to: youve sent stuff, clothes you dont use very often, books, kitchen appliances. in the case of kids being sent for by their parents, there are two images. one they see in the pictures theyve received and the albums theyve collected and the familiar stranger who walks out of the airplane, who walks into the door, and looking very much like the person they left behind but, taller, stronger, grown which is to say not familiar at all. dionne brand has this short bit- from her 1997 governor generals award winning poetry collection "land to light on"- about kids, immigrant kids, being packed away like clothes, folded into a box. her point in the poem, which im sure im butchering, is that you cant. you just cant pack up kids like that. but this isnt said in bitterness because, really, what are the options? what are the alternatives?
You're right in asking what are the alternatives. I do not know really because it's far from me to say people should "stay" because that's a pointless endeavor in a world where no one really stays, unless you're forced or found.
I presume there are a number of people wondering who is that person in the album?