“When you’re inside a piece of writing that hums and crackles and sparks,” says Sonya Huber, author of\u00a0Voice: A Manifesto<\/em>, “when a real person is talking to you from the page, you’ve encountered a voice.” My guidance in WR 153: “Every Life, A Story” is that students read and write selfishly, searching out works that stretch the bounds of creative nonfiction both in terms of craft and source. For example, students can draw from interviews with musicians or from Instagram posts in war zones, the kinds of accounts that may not make it to literary magazines. This inclusive approach serves our efforts to decolonize craft\u2014to embrace compelling voices, regardless of platform. Ajani Hickling’s “Third Worlds” represents the last paper in a sequence that comprises a group craft paper, an individual research paper, and a personal essay on any topic. Students workshop their essays in small groups and conclude the semester with a week or more of in-class readings. Cell phones go away and all eyes turn to the podium, where, one by one, students bravely share their most intimate work. Ajani’s voice leaps from the page with vivid details and wry observations, at turns playful, curious and wise. As a member of the journal’s editorial staff says, “Your compelling, disarming voice tells a story I wanted to keep on going!” However you encounter it, that is what great writing should do.<\/p>\n Before writing \u201cThird Worlds\u201d, I hadn\u2019t seen myself as a writer, or a poet. But neither had I truly seen myself as many of the identities I reflect on throughout this piece, prior to its creation. I hadn\u2019t seen either, in my years of photography, the impact that capturing my own story could have.<\/p>\n Taking WR153: \u201cEvery Life, A Story\u201d was my intro to writing personal essays. The course simultaneously marked my departure from a long streak of academic writing, and my first time really shifting my creative focus inwards. Writing this piece led me to write my first poem\u2014a spoken word rendition of this memoir. This in turn, led to my first reading\u2014soon, the first of many. I found people listening to, identifying with, and being impacted by my words more profoundly than I had ever expected.<\/p>\n \u201cThird Worlds\u201d is a m\u00e9lange of seemingly disconnected moments interspersed throughout my first year in college, and in America. Each expresses an aspect of my intersecting identities. Altogether, the story does not capture my entirety. Ultimately that is the story\u2019s essence. \u201cThird Worlds\u201d is about looking, living, and learning. It is a piece about reflecting, rejecting, and accepting. More than anything else, it is the recognition that there is always more to be seen.<\/p>\n My first year of college introduced me to the communal bathroom experience. Over time, I would learn that the rightmost shower had the best water pressure, and as such was the most sought-after stall on Floor 12. I found that the leftmost shower hardly received any light, that the middle right shower had a broken showerhead, and that the middle left had a handle that had to be rotated twice for hot water to flow.<\/span><\/p>\n In my first month of dorm life, however, I didn\u2019t know the intricacies of this bathing system. So, when I spun that middle-left handle one full rotation and cold water rained down on me, I thought \u201cI suppose there\u2019s no hot water today\u201d. I would use this shower from time to time, and from time to time, the water would simply be cold. One day, when I heard water running from the adjacent stall, I decided to ask if this neighbour of mine had warm water. He seemed confused. Of course the water was warm; why would it not be? Fiddling with the handle led me to discover the secret second rotation, and since that day, my showers have always been warm.<\/span><\/p>\n Growing up, sometimes the water would be cold. You could stand under the shower and wait, and wait, and the water would not warm. Other days, there wouldn\u2019t be any water in the pipes at all. Periods of drought meant Mona Reservoir\u2019s water reserve running low, and the National Water Commission announcing when the city could use water, and when they should expect what we called \u201clock-offs\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n Days like these meant boiling water in a kettle, or on a stovetop pot, and mixing it with cold water to get a warm \u2018wash bucket\u2019. Days like these meant taking a cup and pouring water over your body, and soaping and scrubbing yourself. As a child, days like these meant impatiently awaiting the end of your shower so you could lift the wash bucket over your shoulders and pour its contents over your body with joy, catharsis, feeling like you were at a water park.<\/span><\/p>\n My new neighbour would not think to ask, \u201cis there water today?\u201d. He wouldn\u2019t think to ask, \u201cis the water warm today?\u201d. I soon learned that these answers are unchanging, and so the questions aren\u2019t asked.<\/span><\/p>\n …<\/p>\n When I tell people I\u2019m Jamaican, they ask me where I\u2019m from.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s a standard \u2018getting to know you\u2019 college question, but the first couple times I heard it, it seemed silly. I say I\u2019m from Jamaica, I grew up in Kingston. I only moved to Boston a few months ago. And at this point, a piece seems to click into place in their minds. \u201cWait\u2026 you\u2019re just coming from there?\u201d, or \u201cWait, you did high school there?\u201d, as though Jamaica was a foreign, untouchable world.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve since learned that \u201cJamaican\u201d has a broad definition in America. I\u2019ll meet Jamaicans who have never set foot on the island, Jamaicans whose grandparents grew up in the country, Jamaicans with one parent who migrated when they were a teenager. I meet Jamaicans from New York, Jamaicans from Alabama, and Jamaicans from California. You can be Jamaican, yet not from Jamaica.<\/span><\/p>\n The question of \u2018where are you from\u2019 was never one I would think to ask. To introduce myself as Jamaican was to answer both \u201cwho are you\u201d and \u201cwhere are you from\u201d. But here, where the label is claimed across communities, and spans space and generation, it becomes relevant. The one answer splits, migrates, and becomes more than just one.<\/span><\/p>\n …<\/p>\n Before being seen as Jamaican, I\u2019m seen as Black here.<\/span><\/p>\n I was never <\/span>really<\/span><\/i> Black in Jamaica. Back home, if you were Chinese, you were Mr. or Miss Chin\u2014regardless of your last name. If you were dark-skinned, no racial nickname would serve to differentiate you from most. So large black men were \u201cBiggs\u201d and thick black women were \u201cMaamz\u201d. Tall men were called \u201ctall man\u201d, short men were \u201cshort man\u201d.\u00a0 If you were older, you were \u201cauntie\u201d or \u201cuncle\u201d, and if a Jamaican man didn\u2019t know your name as a woman, you were \u201cmiss\u201d, \u201cprincess\u201d, \u201cempress\u201d, or \u201cbabes\u201d,\u2026depending on how much they wanted you. And since I had a lighter skin tone than the average, I was \u201cbrown man\u201d (and had I looked like a woman, I would\u2019ve been \u201cbrownin\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n See, race carried as much significance, as a descriptor, as your height did, or your weight, or your age. So, I was never Black in the way that I\u2019m Black here. I was never what my aunt called \u201cBlackity-Black-Black\u201d\u2014the Black Americans I found myself befriending, who manoeuvre life with chips on shoulders, and for whom race was a major part of their identity. I was never the kind of Black person who faced systemic discrimination. I did not grow up like the Black people who had to question how to talk, question how to act, and question how they would be perceived around white people. Though they looked like me, I could not see myself in them. Growing up where Black was the default, these were never questions that had to be asked. Nowadays, these are the questions I ponder from time to time.<\/span><\/p>\n …<\/p>\n Because you\u2019ll get close, and you\u2019ll get comfortable, and one day yuh jus deh yah a siddung inna dining hall and yuh jus a chat to yuh friend dem, a tell one story bout how it bun yuh when yah try walk pon di people dem crosswalk and di people dem inna dem car a try turn like seh dem nuh see yuh, and like seh dem wah lick yuh dung like yah roadkill or supm, an yuh jus a chat and yah chat and yah talk and yah talk and yuh realise seh yuh fava one bloodclaat poppy show cah yuh jus a look pon dem and yuh see\u2026blank faces.<\/span><\/p>\n You know the questions that they\u2019re not asking\u2014\u201cwhat do you mean?\u201d, \u201cwhat\u2019s a bloodclaat?\u201d, \u201cCould- could you say that again? Maybe a little slower?\u201d. You\u2019ve heard the questions before. Their faces speak clearly, though their mouths remain silent.<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019re used to saying \u201chush\u201d instead of \u201csorry\u201d, and \u201csorry\u201d instead of \u201cexcuse me\u201d, and morewhile you haffi just siddung an\u2019 hol a medz an\u2019 tell yuhself jah kno, a dirt\u2014because you don\u2019t know how to translate \u201cmorewhile\u201d or \u201cjah kno\u201d or \u201cif a dirt, a dirt\u201d. So instead, you speak the Queen\u2019s English\u2014Standard English, as we\u2019d call it back home. In doing so, you standardise yourself. You lose a layer of your own self-expression.<\/span><\/p>\n You become one of those Jamaicans, whose Jamaican-ness is hardly visible. Hidden. Secondary to your blackness. The kind of Jamaican whose heritage and culture and language can be turned on and off, if it can be turned on at all.<\/span><\/p>\n And after that shift, new questions come up. The chef at the dining hall asks you \u201c\u00bfEres Latino?\u201d, because to him, you seem Dominican. And a man at Walgreens trying to buy a gift card asks \u201cou pale krey\u00f2l?\u201d, because he thinks\u2014hopes\u2014you might be Haitian. Standardised, Black before anything else, you become so easily mistaken for your neighbours.<\/span><\/p>\n And when you go to Toronto over spring break, to get a break from it all, and your aunt asks if you want to canerow your hair\u2014sorry, <\/span>cornrow<\/span><\/i>, your hair. Since you now live in a country built on corn and cotton, and not cane sugar and molasses.<\/span><\/p>\n Your aunt offers to cornrow your hair, and you return to Boston, and realise you look exactly how you\u2019re expected to look. And when the style deteriorates, and you don\u2019t have the time to undo the braids and you don a durag for a duration of time, you fit the part even better. They don\u2019t need to ask any further questions.<\/span><\/p>\n …<\/p>\n Traversing these worlds makes you more aware of where you fit into them. Going back home, briefly, you visit your family. Auntie Dans comments that \u201cyou know I don\u2019t really like canerows on men\u2026 they really are more a girl\u2019s style\u201d. Auntie Bobo comments on what a great person, guy, no, man, you\u2019ve grown to be. She\u2019s reluctant to use the word because you\u2019ve always been her little boy, her nephew, the first boy pickney of the family.<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019re reluctant because you realise \u201cman\u201d, \u201cboy\u201d, and \u201cmale\u201d are labels you\u2019ve more accepted than assigned. Just as you weren\u2019t racialised as Black Americans are, you don\u2019t gender yourself as others do. You\u2019d sooner call yourself a photographer, or a Jamaican, or some other aspect of your identity to which you are more attached. Canerows were just a hairstyle, one available to you now that your hair was long enough. Earrings, which your aunts similarly disapproved of, were no different from rings, or necklaces, or shoes: items, accessories. For most, they were relics from one world. For me to don them was to be a Martian amongst Earthlings. A Jamaican amongst Americans. Foreign, not immediately understood, not easily categorised.<\/span><\/p>\n …<\/p>\n Those same aunts used to think I was queer for that same reason. They were not the first to ask, or to wonder. Growing up, where men wore skinny jeans and polo shirts, and listened to dancehall, and ran in cliques talking about being gunmen and how dem would bun battyman, for me to not emulate these traits\u2014to read, to take photos, to make art, having queer friends\u2014indicated to many a citizenship to a foreign, taboo world. To others, I was seen as a \u201cgyallis\u201d\u2014meaning a man with many women. Because I was brown skinned, I was seen as attractive, more closely aligned with a Eurocentric beauty standard than most. And because I spent my time with more women than men, we must have been involved. It was never a question to be asked.<\/span><\/p>\n And so, I never asked myself where my attraction lay. I knew I wasn\u2019t interested in men, so I assumed I was interested in women. If not one world, then the other. So, when a friend expressed interest when I was home between semesters, I decided to explore that world. Sex was more like a game than anything, and I loved games. It was never passion, or desire\u2026 It was a question of what to do with the joystick, and what buttons to press and in which order, to get the other player to level up. It was a question of how I could play the game better.<\/span><\/p>\n See I\u2019d never understood celebrity crushes, and while I could recognise when someone was hot, it was in the same way you\u2019d acknowledge the artistry of a painting or a photograph\u2014admiration of beauty in features, and in aesthetics; but you wouldn\u2019t fuck a painting.<\/span><\/p>\n …<\/p>\n Living in the first world, coming from a third world\u2026 too often means adapting your nuances and experiences to match expectations of the first. Adjusting. Assimilating. But in walking between worlds, I\u2019ve begun to become more aware of my place, my privilege, my perspective in each of them. This year, I\u2019ve learned Java and Python, and enough French to help the Haitian man buy his gift card. But perhaps, my most important lesson was learning which questions I never thought to ask myself.<\/span><\/p>\n Ajani Hickling <\/strong><\/span>is a sophomore, studying Computer Science in the College of Arts and Sciences. Ajani was raised in Kingston, Jamaica, currently studies and works in Boston, and looks forward to wherever the world may take them next. As a photographer, programmer, and poet, Ajani finds themself stepping between different worlds and finding themself within each one. Their immense gratitude goes out to Professor Melanie Smith, who encouraged them to explore a new path during a time where they were seeking, however unknowingly, a new form of self-expression.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ajani Hickling Instructor’s Introduction “When you’re inside a piece of writing that hums and crackles and sparks,” says Sonya Huber, author of\u00a0Voice: A Manifesto, “when a real person is talking to you from the page, you’ve encountered a voice.” My guidance in WR 153: “Every Life, A Story” is that students read and write selfishly, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19937,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19937"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=945"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1041,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945\/revisions\/1041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/span><\/p>\nMelanie S. Smith<\/h6>\n
\nFrom the Writer<\/h4>\n
\nThird Worlds<\/h3>\n
\n