In the past few blogs I’ve written about wanting to love my birth mother Rosa, a woman I did not get to know. The mother who raised me, however, I knew and loved dearly.
She was 50 when she decided to keep me. her name was Esther, but I called her Mutti, for she was German. She was born in 1888, while Queen Victoria still ruled in England. Picture being raised by a Victorian woman! I could ...
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After meeting my birthfather Gil, I begin to love not only him, but also the culture and history of my ancestors.
Here’s an excerpt from Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity.:
In Jamaica, so many years ago, Dr. Dezon was all set to tell me about shiploads of Caribs who were taken from the island of St. Vincent by the English and dumped on the Central American coast. At the time I was not ...
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“Where are you from?” is a simple question. The answer, however, can become rather complex.
When I am asked where I’m from, people expect me to say a Caribbean island, and look at me a bit more closely when I say Guatemala because I don’t look like a representative of the Mayan population. Can I claim being Guatemalan, though? Growing up, my friends were by and large Germans and I spoke primarily German at home. I was the only Black kid ...
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As a morning person, my best hours are early in the day when I observe dawn slowly creep over the sky to warm up the horizon. I love dawn and I love going for an early hike with M’penzi, my faithful basenji.
Today I found an email from a German childhood friend in Guatemala. Feels as if friendships forged early in life remain ...
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