Even before leaving, we already seemed to have Jamaica on the brain. For JD it might’ve been connected to his rumination on the cultural significance of The Clash, and my chatting up my someday follow-up on Jamaican music’s status as global authenticator (à la the importance of dancehall, for instance, to Gwen Stefani and MIA). For me it might have come from sitting on a thesis about Jamaican film, or last year recommending Stephanie Black’s documentary, Life and Debt for a poco class. Or maybe it was my own brief contemplations on Zahra Redwood, the first Rastafari Miss Universe contestant.

Most likely it was my memory of living in Flatbush during graduate school, of feasting daily on jerk chicken from Danny and Pepper’s (they’ve since split up!) or of making toast from Gordon’s bread, or my weekend treat of ackee and saltfish. (By the way, can we just add ackee to that list of foods that make no sense? Like yucca, ackee can kill you just for looking at it: who figured out that, if you get past all these poisonous contingencies, that it would become edible?)

Needless, to say, after a full week of three-square Jamaican meals, it’s a little bit hard to be home. Oh, and splitting our time between Kingston’s über-urbanity, Mona’s bucolic-yet-rigorous academic environs, and Bob Marley’s gorgeous Blue Mountain retreat didn’t hurt neither! We didn’t hit the beach on our trip. I love the sea, but sand in Jamaican summer (95° in the shade baby!) came in second to Strawberry Hill, a cool mountain retreat overlooking Kingston and the ocean on one side, and surrounded by the beautiful blue mountains. Sigh.

Interestingly, both our hotels were Chris Blackwell properties, so he had to count as our celebrity sighting. Both properties are deeply integrated into Kingston and its environs (albeit in very middle and upper class ways). At the Terra Nova in Kingston, it was all about the bar scene, and friends and business people brunchin’ and lunching on the terrace. At Strawberry Hill it was all about Sunday brunch, with Kingston families in their Sunday best. Don’t get me wrong, class conflict, and our refusal to recognize it properly in black communities, is one of the central problems in such communities–and I am in general worried about the exalted place of consumerism in African American life. But what does it mean that class difference, or even people of just difference classes, is seldomly represented? And what does it mean to forget that class difference is about more than money, that it is also indicative of cultural differences that contribute to the richness and diversity that blackness should also signify?

Jamaica reminded me a lot of my time in Ghana, and I couldn’t help but think about how this is the part of black life (and I’m going Diasporic here) that is seldom represented in general, particularly in any global sense. I think about the vast swaths of Chicago’s South Side, for instance, that are solidly black and solidly middle-class, and have been so for generations. Where are those stories? Jamaica’s story is a story of slavery, colonialism, and independence, studded with repeated and striking instances of resistance and accomplishment. I couldn’t help but wish my son were older, so that he could really register this sense of black people everywhere, every one different in so many ways. Another twist on the national motto: “Out of many, one people.” He noticed it in his little ways though: “mommy, all the brown people.”

For our big tourist excursion, we visited Devon House, which was the Kingston home of Jamaica’s first black millionaire, George Stiebel. Built in the 19th c., its lore includes the story of Lady H., who had a road built to circumvent Devon House, so that she would never have to see it.

The day before our visit to the house, I had mentioned our Devon House excursion to one of the Jamaican students working the conference. I was a little shamefaced (ok not really, but you know what I mean), assuming he would laugh at our “big tourist trip.” But no, he stiffened his back a bit, becoming more formal in his comportment even as his language became more comfortable to me, “Ya mon. Devon House is a great place. Our first black millionaire. That’s a good choice for a trip.” I felt a test coming on–contrary to what you’ve heard about the SATs and such, black people love tests! Suddenly our roles of student and teacher switched:

He asks: “and do you know where the road is?”

I say, laughing: “The one the white lady built?”

“Yah mon. Do you know why she had it built?”

“So that she would never have to drive past a rich black man’s house.”

“Yah, stupid lady would go an hour out of her way just to avoid it.”

“That’s pretty fucking awesome.”

Laughter: “Yah mon.” (picking up my big fat midwestern accent). “It was pretty f-ing awesome.”

I had passed the race test, but, as usual, had failed the West Indian propriety test. Oh well. It was still pretty fucking awesome!