I don’t have a strong connection with my background, but the main thing that does connect me to it is food. Caribbean food isn’t all that tasty to me, but there isn’t anything like it that is important to my background. The main food I’ll be focusing on is Sugarcane. Sugarcane is a grass that you grow which is very sweet on the inside. My father introduced this to me when I was around 7 years old; the spring of 2013. I watched as he cracked open the shell, then showed me how to get as much flavor out of it as I could. This food/snack is very significant to me because of its uniqueness and how rarely we get it. Other caribbean foods we eat don’t have the same impact on my connection because we eat it a lot. At the time, I’m sitting there wondering what my father is doing because I don’t understand what’s so special about what I’m going to eat. After the first taste, as a 7 year old, I didn’t care for the background of the food: I just wanted the sweetness that came out of it. Looking back I failed to realize why that food is so important. I probably am only realizing it now because I haven’t had it in a long long time. My father wanted me to have some type of connection to Jamaica, and this food was is way of creating it.

– Pierce Neil

Relationship:  Child of im/migrant Child of im/migrant