My Mother's Haiti

On September 9, 1989, my mother boarded her return flight to JFK with my father in tow. Another completed trip to her motherland, Ayiti, was embedded in her body. There was nothing particularly special about the trip, per se, as it was not precipitated by a wedding, funeral, specific family visit, or any of the other myriad reasons those known as immigrants in the United States revisit their true origins of home. In my mother's words, she went to “enjoy her country” and a month later was returning to her second home. The second home that required her to mother her three children in a very specific way based on the white gaze. The second home that provided the option to work twelve-hour shifts, four days a week, toward earning the most income anyone in her bloodline had ever earned, to her knowledge. The second home that seduced her into assimilation toward tasting the tantalizing American pie.

Four hours after takeoff, my freshly traumatized mother touched down hyperventilating with tears pouring down her face and declared that she would never step foot on a plane again. Turbulence, lightning, looming death, screams, thunder, overhead baggage everywhere, loss of control in the sky. Pure terror! She passed in February 2023 having kept her word. Her trip in 1989 was, in fact, the last time her feet touched the island of Hispaniola.

Ayiti is on my mind as the news circulates stories of strife, poverty, and chaos consuming not only the island but my fellow brethren inhabiting and migrating from the country. What would be the tone of my mother's comments at the blocked canal of the Massacre River? In what new or familiar ways would she express anxiety at the mention of yet another hurricane or earthquake decimating Haiti? My mother was a proud Haitian woman, and remarkably critical of her fellow countrymen while understanding the ins and outs of imperialism and the deep-rooted impact of colonialism on modern-day “freed” countries. Nevertheless, my