The connection of Caribbean and American ideals

With Charysse Harper, Communications and Engagement Lead for Talking Therapies

We’re proud to champion the diverse voices of #TeamCWPT. Reflecting on Black History Month, Charysse reclaimed her narrative and shared how her experiences growing up have shaped who she is today.

Following Black History Month, I wanted to share my perspective of being a Black woman from around the world.

So, who is Charysse?

I am American and was born in Oxnard, California, to Trinidadian parents. My parents met in Washington DC at Howard University. They ended up settling in Oxnard after my dad’s job as a mechanical engineer took them travelling around the northern hemisphere for a few years and my mom said the next place we go to, we’re staying in!

Oxnard’s highest population is Latinos with the Black community only making up 2%. Despite this, I never had any issues growing up. As the city relies on migrants to support its farming industry, lots of the street signs are in Spanish and I can therefore speak Spanish to a high degree (although not fluently!). This is the culture that has added to my experience as an American being raised in southern California.

For my undergraduate degree, I attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.? Although it’s only an hour away from Oxnard, the demographic is very different. With a higher percentage of Black people, I experienced a culture shock as I wasn’t used to encountering so many Black Americans. With my background from Oxnard, they thought I wasn’t ‘Black enough’ and I was trying to ‘sound White’. But if ‘sounding White’ meant sounding educated and trying to do more for myself, then fine, I ‘sounded White’. I’ve been very fortunate to have been widely accepted finding it quite interesting that the discrimination I experienced in Los Angeles was from my own race. I’ve come to realise that people project their thoughts about how they expect you to be onto you, without actually knowing who you are.

I graduated with degrees in journalism and cinema, which led me to create a documentary about my Trini heritage and culture. Therefore, I moved and lived in Trinidad for just over a year after graduating.

Being from Trinidad has more of an influence on me than being American. I feel this is because the way we grew up: eating Trinidadian food, having our home decorating in a West Indian manner and speaking in the Trini vernacular.

In Trinidad, I worked at a national news station and applied for citizenship. As I had access to filming equipment, I was able to make documentaries about key aspects of Trini culture: steel pans and Carnival. The steelpan is the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago and we finally have a day that this is recognised globally: World Steelpan Day on 11 August each year as named by the United Nations. The beginnings of this instrument occurred by taking a discarded oil drum and beating it until various sounds formed. Most pioneers at the time did not read music, so learning to play the steel pan was passed to each person by demonstration and copying the way the other person had played something to you. And that’s how I learned to play the steelpan, too: I can’t read any music sheets (though I really should learn!), but ask me to repeat a melody to you, and I can!

After my time in Trinidad, I then moved to the UK to do my postgraduate degree and decided to stay. As I’m here on a visa sponsored by an employer, it’s given me a better appreciation for my parents when they moved to the US and those who live by visa regulations. As April approaches each year, I always get slightly scared as you never know how the amendment of the visa rules will affect you.

As I live in London, I’m still surrounded by a diverse population. Of my friends, only 2 are actually British. Working for CWPT has exposed me to more British things than I’ve experienced before! I know words like ‘pottering’ and ‘cuppa’.

I’ve never had to adjust the way I speak in any of the places I’ve lived in and haven’t had to adjust my American accent, but when I go further north in the UK, I am finding that I do have to speak more slowly now so people can understand me.

My Trinidadian culture influences how I say things. So here in the UK, you pronounce colander as cul-in-der but I still always pronounce it col-an-der.

My final thoughts are that no matter how you perceive yourself, people will look at you and come to their own judgement. When I travel to a country with a large black population (Nigeria), they would try to decipher which tribe I belong to. In a mostly non-Black country like Japan, they would assume I’m from the African continent. In vacationing in Peru, where I can speak Spanish to the locals, they would assume I’m from Latin America (Dominican Republic, Panama, Cuba or Colombia). Sometimes, people just don’t know and they do not mean to be offensive. I actually find it quite amusing. It actually gives me the opportunity to showcase my Trini and American cultures and I love doing so!