Circular migration to and from the Caribbean.
In the passport photo, the nineteen-year-old Jamaican girl stares straight ahead at the camera. Hers is a poker face. She has never blinked, and will not, especially now, ahead of her departure for a new life in New York. Her face does not betray her excitement. An aunt in Harlem has promised to sponsor her. But something goes wrong; the trip is canceled in the fallout from a vengeful family feud. The girl in the photo, Ethlyn, is my mother. She will give birth to me fifteen years later in Luton, an industrial town in the UK.
