I am Jamaican, but I will not attempt to excuse my odd behavior. I will mention the fact that I am the only Jamaican in the United States who does not voluntarily make a bombastic show of my culture.

I remember the very day that I became a Jamaican. Up to my fourteenth year I lived in a rural community in St. Ann, Jamaica, called Brown’s Town. The only Caucasians I interacted with were those who came to my school to “spread the gospel in a land where it was not prohibited.” The few native Caucasians – or individuals light enough to be nicknamed “brownin” – lived in the capital, Kingston, and traveled to “country” when there was a funeral, wedding, or vacation. But we were used to seeing them come so there was no need to make fools of ourselves by jabbering about what made our country more unique than theirs. (I have a feeling it was the ever-increasing crime rate, our unconquerable pollution problem, or maybe even our corrupt government. Any factor works, really.) The real foreigners were distinguished by their accent and oblivious face when we started talking Jamaican Patois, or as it was commonly called, “patwah.”

I was not the slightest bit perturbed when these people came to our school. My family was fortunate enough to be able to travel to America often, and I could feign an American accent when I needed to. The only courtesy I paid was the expected “Good morning” or “Good evening” when an adult passed by, whether it was a lunatic or the prime minister. My classmates were not so composed; they were determined to make the most of the rare opportunity of seeing “white people.” What they did not realize was that they did not need to brag about their culture because we all knew what it meant to be Jamaican. Furthermore, the tourists they tried to impress would not begin to understand until they found a Jamaican-English dictionary. Even after that they would not be able to understand what it meant to be Jamaican because it was an inexpressible feeling that you can only know by being born there.

Changes came to my family when my father became terminally ill. His immigration papers had already been processed, and we could have left but not until he got better. Though he seemed to be recovering, our optimism was destroyed by his sudden death. We had to wait another two years for my mother’s immigration papers to be processed. At first my siblings and I were happy to leave behind our little town and the strenuous school assignments. It did not take us long to realize that we would miss people we had known all our lives, be separated from our father’s side of the family, crave our close-knit school family, and long for the freedom to live without people asking us if we came from “The Islands.”

But I was not tragically born a Jamaican. It is obvious that our country is in need of major changes, but that made us stick together to find solutions for problems that have existed before Christopher Columbus came in 1494. I was not going to sulk because Jamaica was a third-world country; if being a first-world country meant that we would be confined to our houses, engrossed in our technologies, and dependent upon an omnipotent government, then I’d have preferred to come from a fifth-world country.

I must admit it hurts being shunned by the same people who praised your country only seconds before, but I have learned to let the little things slide. I have learned to be proud of who I am, even if it means bragging sometimes. And to those people who criticize and find fault in everything Jamaicans do, I say, “Join the club.”

Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the descendant of Africans. I do not even stir. Our six national heroes and one heroine fought to have our people and nation respected. Even when they failed after a series of rebellions and were discriminated against by their white conquerors, they got up and fought again. Emancipation freed the physical bodies of our people, independence gave us an opportunity to make our own choices, and the election of our first prime minister liberated our minds from mental slavery and thoughts of inferiority.

I do not always feel like a Jamaican; I go to a church that is predominantly Caribbean. I feel most like a Jamaican when I am surrounded by people of a different color. For instance, when I have to present in one of my AP classes and I can spot no more than three people who are non-white, then I feel my race. There are never other Jamaicans in my classes; I’ve stopped looking.

Sometimes it is the other way around. For instance, when I see Usain Bolt receiving gold medals at the Olympics or Tessanne Chin holding that 15-second note on “The Voice,” my Jamaican pride overwhelms me. These are people who came from humble origins and had the zeal to make our nation known for something other than one of the highest crime rates in the world. The crime rate data is a fact, but if we only dwelled on our flaws then we would not know how much we could accomplish or the changes we could instigate.

At certain times I have no nationality; I am me. I have no separate feeling about being an American citizen and a Jamaican citizen at the same time. Our national motto is “Out of many, one people.”

People are like the patches of fabric that make up a quilt. We do not possess qualities that allow us to function as wholly independent beings. We may have different patterns or come from older pieces of fabric, or even have a different texture, but when we are united we serve a greater function. The contribution each of us can make transcends nationality, race, gender, or any other factor that can cause us to doubt the infallibility of the seamstress who patched us together in the first place and stitches us up when we need mending.