Tek Wuh Ah Tellin Yuh

No matter where I lay my head at night, I'll always be a proud Brooklynite. Doscher Street's seen countless skinned knees, block parties, and backyard cookouts set to Pump Me Up with too many bottles of Presidente. 

Growing up in the 11208 as the first-born child of two Caribbean parents and 1 of too many to count cousins, my worldview is different to say the least. I lovingly call my blog space Tek Wuh Ah Tellin Yuh as nod to the Guyanese creole that narrated my childhood and peppers my speech during phone calls with my mother. She'd tell you that I'm a platanos and the only Dominican thing about me are my hands - a perfect replica of my father's. Tek Wuh Ah Tellin Yuh also pays homage to my late aunt, Sharon Vanita Azeez, who never shied away from taking up space and owning it.

This space is for me. Tek Wuh Ah Tellin Yuh means listen up, pay attention, and that's that on that. All of these things are exactly what this corner of the internet affords me- a place to process and lay out the messiness of my life, like the limitations of my family's commitment to assimilation and respectability, the loneliness of being caught between the Black/White racial binary as an Afro-Caribbean woman, intergenerational survival strategies that require self-abnegation, and the struggle to undo and unlearn the internalized -isms that permeate my childhood. This is a home for letters addressed to me, my loved ones, and sometimes to you.

This is an opportunity to take up space for a voice typically silenced. Here's to no longer being complicit in my own erasure.