My father as a Silk Cotton Tree
My father is a jumbie story. From my earliest memories, he has been an ongoing conversation. Tales of him spurred from mundane moments that would branch into unexpected directions. I listened to storytellers speak of him eagerly and avoidantly, rooted in their feelings of desire and danger. Like children who were raised in the land of the Silk Cotton Tree, the stories that I heard growing up impacted me. I developed a caution around my father. His presence came to me as hauntings - of images, words and relationships between what I could see and what I could not. Over time, I became critical of what others had to say about him and I developed a curiosity for his belongings and what he could say for himself.
My teenage father maintained a wide collection of objects. After over twenty years items like Dickies jeans, Ultra sheen hair gel and an array of CDs remained. What interested me most among these items was his writing, preserved in Legal Yellow notebooks. My Father was a writer - a poet - a rapper - a musician - an artist. His writing exposed me to authors like Bell Hooks, activists like Malcom X, and a radical Black aesthetic that grappled with a range of topics that were unique to his identity and experience. His lettering was uncontained by the lines of the pages and would often bleed into sketches, a horror vacui of bubble letters and symbols. He prioritized the double entendres of his lines and the sound they had when spoken. His disregard for the confinements was a form of play that resisted formalist western traditions both inadvertently and intentionally. My father’s work was rooted in Black creative traditions established through a history of cultural-political resistance.
Artistry is something that I share with my father, among our blood, body, and ancestry. With our eyes, I can see the cultural context of his work exists beyond a single lifetime, rather an accumulation of lifetimes even before his Black American and Afro-Guyanese parents and grandparents. The genealogy of his body and his radical Black aesthetic is rooted in a history of radical Black resistance entangled with the history of the silk cotton tree.
My teenage father maintained a wide collection of objects. After over twenty years items like Dickies jeans, Ultra sheen hair gel and an array of CDs remained. What interested me most among these items was his writing, preserved in Legal Yellow notebooks. My Father was a writer - a poet - a rapper - a musician - an artist. His writing exposed me to authors like Bell Hooks, activists like Malcom X, and a radical Black aesthetic that grappled with a range of topics that were unique to his identity and experience. His lettering was uncontained by the lines of the pages and would often bleed into sketches, a horror vacui of bubble letters and symbols. He prioritized the double entendres of his lines and the sound they had when spoken. His disregard for the confinements was a form of play that resisted formalist western traditions both inadvertently and intentionally. My father’s work was rooted in Black creative traditions established through a history of cultural-political resistance.
Artistry is something that I share with my father, among our blood, body, and ancestry. With our eyes, I can see the cultural context of his work exists beyond a single lifetime, rather an accumulation of lifetimes even before his Black American and Afro-Guyanese parents and grandparents. The genealogy of his body and his radical Black aesthetic is rooted in a history of radical Black resistance entangled with the history of the silk cotton tree.
The Silk Cotton Tree has a prominent presence in Caribbean folklore. They remain at the center of stories such as the Dutch Jumbies who live in the roots of the Guyanese Silk Cotton trees; Gang Gang Sarah who, in attempting to fly back home after emancipation, fell from a Silk Cotton Tree in Tobago; and tales of Douens, lonesome infants that wander the woods and leur companions are also found at the foot of the Silk Cotton tree. The impact of this grand tree is evident in its persistence across historic and contemporary cultures in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Mayan civilization referred to the tree as Yaxche, meaning green tree. The tree's significance was at the core of their spiritual belief system, which anchored the earth with a Yaxche growing in the center and marking its four corners. Mayan Temples were built under the shade of the yaxche and within the walls, carved images would detail the tree as a site of the afterlife, where one would sit, forever relieved of labor. Mayan legends would forewarn of characters like Xtabai who was known to seduce men to her tree, from which they would rarely return.
Before colonialism, a diverse composition of indigenous communities thrived across the islands and regions, named by christopher columbus as the West Indies. The blanket term Caribs became used to generalize the many peoples whose customs flourished alongside the land. Several Amerindian or Indigenous communities relied on the Kumaka tree as a basis for their beliefs and as a material to build grand canoes. The Kumaka tree is the basis for legends like the story of Makanaima, who cuts down the tree, scattering the fruits of the earth across the land and creating a terrain of river rapids and mountains like Mt. Roraima in Guyana.
In Jamaica, as well as Trinidad and Tobago, the tree holds ancestral significance to Afro-Caribbean peoples. Contemporary African spiritual practitioners, labeled as Obeah by colonists, draw their traditions from the creolization of African customs which were introduced when the first African peoples arrived to the Caribbean on slave ships. Practitioners hold beliefs that spirits and ancestors abide within the silk cotton tree. They are known to ritually drive nails into the trunk as they cast spirits into the tree. Before cutting down the tree, practitioners will pour libation and make offerings around the base of the silk cotton tree. Veneration for the tree is common among the diverse population in Trinidad and Tobago and has resulted in the development of establishments and roads around the Silk Cotton Trees, a hesitation in construction that is otherwise unusual.
The Silk Cotton tree, Yaxche, Kumaka Tree, Kapok or Cieba tree grows in many varieties and in almost every corner of the earth. Kapok refers to the silk fibers found within the pods that grow from the varieties of trees native to the tropical Americas, West Africa, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Asia, Northern Australia, New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands.
Mayan civilization referred to the tree as Yaxche, meaning green tree. The tree's significance was at the core of their spiritual belief system, which anchored the earth with a Yaxche growing in the center and marking its four corners. Mayan Temples were built under the shade of the yaxche and within the walls, carved images would detail the tree as a site of the afterlife, where one would sit, forever relieved of labor. Mayan legends would forewarn of characters like Xtabai who was known to seduce men to her tree, from which they would rarely return.
Before colonialism, a diverse composition of indigenous communities thrived across the islands and regions, named by christopher columbus as the West Indies. The blanket term Caribs became used to generalize the many peoples whose customs flourished alongside the land. Several Amerindian or Indigenous communities relied on the Kumaka tree as a basis for their beliefs and as a material to build grand canoes. The Kumaka tree is the basis for legends like the story of Makanaima, who cuts down the tree, scattering the fruits of the earth across the land and creating a terrain of river rapids and mountains like Mt. Roraima in Guyana.
In Jamaica, as well as Trinidad and Tobago, the tree holds ancestral significance to Afro-Caribbean peoples. Contemporary African spiritual practitioners, labeled as Obeah by colonists, draw their traditions from the creolization of African customs which were introduced when the first African peoples arrived to the Caribbean on slave ships. Practitioners hold beliefs that spirits and ancestors abide within the silk cotton tree. They are known to ritually drive nails into the trunk as they cast spirits into the tree. Before cutting down the tree, practitioners will pour libation and make offerings around the base of the silk cotton tree. Veneration for the tree is common among the diverse population in Trinidad and Tobago and has resulted in the development of establishments and roads around the Silk Cotton Trees, a hesitation in construction that is otherwise unusual.
The Silk Cotton tree, Yaxche, Kumaka Tree, Kapok or Cieba tree grows in many varieties and in almost every corner of the earth. Kapok refers to the silk fibers found within the pods that grow from the varieties of trees native to the tropical Americas, West Africa, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Asia, Northern Australia, New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands.
The Significance of the Ceiba tree is evident in these regions through its presence in ritual, medicine, and community beliefs. For example, Indigenous West African people located in the Gold Coast believe in malignant spirits like Sasabonsum who is abiding in a Cieba tree. Ayurvedic traditions in India instruct the use ceiba leaves, bark powder and flowers to treat various parasites and illness symptoms. Veneration for the Ceiba tree is a unifying virtue across indigenous communities who grew alongside these trees, whether they are rooted in Africa, India or the Caribbean.
The relationship between indigenous pre-colonial communities and their virtue for the Ceiba tree changed through the devastating exploitation of the transatlantic slave trade. Individuals were severed from their cultural bodies and alienated by way of communication and environment. Following the colonization of indigenous civilizations and the forced transportation and enslavement of African peoples to the West Indies, Europe continued coercive transportation of Indian and Chinese laborers to populate cotton, indigo, tobacco, and sugar plantations across the Caribbean. To the surprise of some, their transplanted environment would bare familiar forests.
In the Caribbean, the Ceiba tree was embraced by Indigenous and migrant peoples, whose spiritual beliefs were revitalized in its presence. The ceiba tree was often a gathering place for celebrations and rituals, moments of closeness to one’s ancestors and home. Colonial Christianity would forbid indigenous spiritual practice as they aimed to convert worship to a european christian god. Indigenous and African worship and celebration around the ceiba tree continued across the Caribbean. The successful Haitian revolution was propelled by the spiritual practices of Vodou. Rebellions often coincided with drumming and chants that voiced the rights of Black existence and rejected white entitlement. This spirit of revolution reverberates across the Caribbean. Plantation owners responded to these events through increased restrictions and for enslaved peoples. In Trinidad and Tobago, present-day Port of Spain was once referred to as Cumuccurapo, meaning “the place of the silk cotton trees”. This forest was often populated by indigenous youth who gathered at the tree, strengthening their community and their bodies for resistance. African peoples shared high regard for the forest and the area became associated with indigenous arts. The british governor Thomas Picton shared in the hysteria common among french planters and ordered the mass cutting of ceiba trees to suppress the potential rebellion after the Haitian revolution. Even under this affliction, enslaved peoples would find their way to the ceiba tree and continue spiritual practice.
The relationship between indigenous pre-colonial communities and their virtue for the Ceiba tree changed through the devastating exploitation of the transatlantic slave trade. Individuals were severed from their cultural bodies and alienated by way of communication and environment. Following the colonization of indigenous civilizations and the forced transportation and enslavement of African peoples to the West Indies, Europe continued coercive transportation of Indian and Chinese laborers to populate cotton, indigo, tobacco, and sugar plantations across the Caribbean. To the surprise of some, their transplanted environment would bare familiar forests.
In the Caribbean, the Ceiba tree was embraced by Indigenous and migrant peoples, whose spiritual beliefs were revitalized in its presence. The ceiba tree was often a gathering place for celebrations and rituals, moments of closeness to one’s ancestors and home. Colonial Christianity would forbid indigenous spiritual practice as they aimed to convert worship to a european christian god. Indigenous and African worship and celebration around the ceiba tree continued across the Caribbean. The successful Haitian revolution was propelled by the spiritual practices of Vodou. Rebellions often coincided with drumming and chants that voiced the rights of Black existence and rejected white entitlement. This spirit of revolution reverberates across the Caribbean. Plantation owners responded to these events through increased restrictions and for enslaved peoples. In Trinidad and Tobago, present-day Port of Spain was once referred to as Cumuccurapo, meaning “the place of the silk cotton trees”. This forest was often populated by indigenous youth who gathered at the tree, strengthening their community and their bodies for resistance. African peoples shared high regard for the forest and the area became associated with indigenous arts. The british governor Thomas Picton shared in the hysteria common among french planters and ordered the mass cutting of ceiba trees to suppress the potential rebellion after the Haitian revolution. Even under this affliction, enslaved peoples would find their way to the ceiba tree and continue spiritual practice.
In Maracas Valley Trinidad, a tall Silk Cotton Tree marks the entrance to Grace and Theodore Ferguson’s Hummingbird garden named Yerette. During a conversation with Theodore, an Agricultural scientist and interpreter of history, he explains how the relationship between the inhabitants of the Caribbean and the silk cotton tree changed throughout the colonization of the region.
Indigenous and African people embraced the tree, but colonial forces at that time didn't like the idea. But, indigenous people were totally committed. The Africans would move around the Silk Cotton Tree, beating their drums. All they were doing was trying to get close to God, the God that the Europeans said didn't exist in their souls. I've discovered that anywhere you go in the world, we all relate to God in the same way other humans do. So, the europeans didn't like that idea and you know what they did? They started cutting down the trees to prevent their celebration. All through the Caribbean, the tree was destroyed by the Europeans to try and stop the celebration, stop the worshiping, that spiritual workship that took place for a long time.
But it gets worse because people still found ways to find trees. So, what they started doing was hanging their slaves from the Silk Cotton Tree. And therein began something that was continued for a long time and continues in the United States, something called lynching. You know the history of lynching? Well, that started in the Caribbean around the Silk Cotton Tree as a way to intimidate and terrorize the indigenous people. And they sent a message to them that the celebrations and feasts, and around the Silk Cotton Tree, is not something they should be doing.
Lynching went down in the Caribbean, and then the tree became known as the hanging tree. And it moved north into North America. But you don't have Silk Cotton Trees in North America. But you have another special tree, the sycamore tree. And that became the tree of choice for lynching. And then lynching became so widespread, it couldn't have been half enough sycamore trees for that. They started using any tree. And then, they started using their places of worship to hang people, as a way of trying to tell Black people, "We are the bosses. We are the ones with the power."
But it gets worse because people still found ways to find trees. So, what they started doing was hanging their slaves from the Silk Cotton Tree. And therein began something that was continued for a long time and continues in the United States, something called lynching. You know the history of lynching? Well, that started in the Caribbean around the Silk Cotton Tree as a way to intimidate and terrorize the indigenous people. And they sent a message to them that the celebrations and feasts, and around the Silk Cotton Tree, is not something they should be doing.
Lynching went down in the Caribbean, and then the tree became known as the hanging tree. And it moved north into North America. But you don't have Silk Cotton Trees in North America. But you have another special tree, the sycamore tree. And that became the tree of choice for lynching. And then lynching became so widespread, it couldn't have been half enough sycamore trees for that. They started using any tree. And then, they started using their places of worship to hang people, as a way of trying to tell Black people, "We are the bosses. We are the ones with the power."
The relationship between the inhabitants of the Caribbean and the Americas changed when the sacred tree became known as the hanging tree. Colonial planters began lynchings to agitate indigenous and african populations who would commune there. This act of domination sent a warning message, that silk cotton trees were dangerous. Over several centuries, the conditions of colonialism, slavery, and imperialism would complicate associations between the inhabitants of the Caribbean and the sacred silk cotton tree. In contemporary Trinidad and Tobago, Silk Cotton trees are associated with jumbies, deadly spirits. The tree is sometimes called, the devil tree. Across the Caribbean, it is known to avoid the Silk Cotton tree, especially at night. The common belief that the Silk cotton tree is evil has resulted in the descendants of enslaved peoples, for their own protection, avoiding the trees their ancestors believed sacred.
Jumbie stories became something shared through word of mouth for the protection of enslaved people from white supremacist violence. Jumbie stories notion to the corporeal abuse associated with the silk cotton tree and the indigenous vitality imbued within them. In the mouths of planters, the stories developed in service to increasing the compliance of plantation laborers. Today, jumbie stories are considered folktales which are often told to children and used to motivate agreement with safety guidelines. Common Jumbie Characters like the Soucouyant, Diablesse, and Massacurra Man are found in forests and rivers. Stories entangle these characters with the earth through metaphors that express ties between the conditions of the self and one’s environment. Enveloped within these resilient narratives remain Indigenous appreciation for the sacred silk cotton tree and reverence for the natural world.
For centuries, the ceiba tree has resisted an atmosphere of harm introduced through settler colonialism and chattel slavery. These conditions extended through north america, where slave labor layed the foundations of the united states. This empire abolished slavery in 1865, twenty-seven years after the emancipation act that passed in the Caribbean. It was after this that lynchings terrorized black folks across both regions. This was especially true for black americans, immigrants and their white allies, predominantly in the american south. It was not until after the abolition of slavery that the united states would even acknowledge Haiti, for sixty years, because its position as the first modern state to abolish slavery contradicted the foundation of american policy and culture. The Caribbean and the united states are bound through black and indigenous struggle for liberation from the colonial forces that aimed to cut them down. Amidst these ties, the trajectory of the regions differ as several Caribbean countries have sought sovereignty through independence and established republics beyond european leadership.The united states however continues developing on the foundation of colonial slavery and rationalises two territories in the caribbean through the monroe doctrine, this paternal presence resembling the vestiges of its colonial foundation. The united states continues its colonial legacy through the development of capitalism and neo-extractivim. These dynamics of domination reflect inward as material conditions that verge into dematerialized cultural atmospheres and artifacts.
Homage to a Native Son
Expanded Rap Entrie
An Intergenerational Collaboration
Expanded Rap Entrie
An Intergenerational Collaboration
My father’s writing reflects an emotional history of contemporary black boyhood. When I read his words, there is an intensity that drives his pencil into the page. This focus reveals a complex synthesis of feelings and thoughts. The text is a preparation for improvised free-style rap within a cypher. This Black oral tradition and community is where thoughts are exchanged through spoken word. The shape of a cypher is shared across a range of black traditions like dance and drum circles. Here, MC’s take turns, spitting verses and actively listening, this exchange of attention is critical to the generative atmosphere of a cypher. MC’s respond and contribute to eachother’s creative momentum. Participants will often speak to the feeling of energy moving from person to person. Together, they strengthen a state of consciousness that draws out unexpected words to intermix with strings of rehearsed writing. My father’s notebooks demonstrate a playful and skillful dedication to creative practice.
His practice generates a private and energetic feeling of immersion, of possession that is constructive to his Black identity.
His identity is inseparable from his creative work and it is within this back oral tradition that he actively engages with it. His writing exhibits a vocabulary of force to frame both violent scenarios and ordinary moments. He narrates himself in the peak of the moment, through symbolic reference to being like the anti-hero pimp trope, focused as a bullet and shooting into the night before tucking his gun away to pray. His work grapples with the intense weight of being seen, at times he seeks recognition and other times, privacy. There is humor to his writing and the way these scenes exist among more ordinary conflicts, like the frustration of being intruded on in the restroom. Whether he is boasting for recognition or deterring scrutiny, his writing responds to surveillance.
“Lay laws in stone Break bones like Bigger Thomas “. My father calls himself a ‘native son’. By referencing the Richard Wright novel that was included in the Black Panther Book List, my father relates his experiences of youth in the nineteen-nineties to conditions six decades before him. Set in the thirties, Native Son characterizes Bigger Thomas as tormented by the racist society of the united states, which has shaped his environment. He lives in a poorly maintained apartment in Chicago’s underprivileged Southside. Bigger’s family dynamics are affected by these inequalities and he harbors intense feelings of anger, with no clear place to direct his rage. This disorientedness is magnified by a series of circumstances, from the accidental murder of Mary Dalton, who was the white daughter of an elite family, followed by the rape and murder of a Black woman close to Bigger, Bessie Mears. Throughout these events, Bigger’s actions aimed to evade his imminent demise, aggregating from the fear of being found in a white woman’s room to the anticipation of being reported to the police by his girlfriend. Throughout the story, Bigger is defined by his rage and anxiety. Eventually, Bigger is arrested and during trial is defended by a communist lawyer who argues that Thomas’ actions are a consequence of whiteness in america. Bigger is sentenced to death, it is during the period leading up to his execution that he contemplates his past relationships and desire for a decent life. In the end, Bigger Thomas reckons with his understanding of himself and the presence of systemic anti-Blackness in the united states.
“Lay laws in stone Break bones like Bigger Thomas “. My father calls himself a ‘native son’. By referencing the Richard Wright novel that was included in the Black Panther Book List, my father relates his experiences of youth in the nineteen-nineties to conditions six decades before him. Set in the thirties, Native Son characterizes Bigger Thomas as tormented by the racist society of the united states, which has shaped his environment. He lives in a poorly maintained apartment in Chicago’s underprivileged Southside. Bigger’s family dynamics are affected by these inequalities and he harbors intense feelings of anger, with no clear place to direct his rage. This disorientedness is magnified by a series of circumstances, from the accidental murder of Mary Dalton, who was the white daughter of an elite family, followed by the rape and murder of a Black woman close to Bigger, Bessie Mears. Throughout these events, Bigger’s actions aimed to evade his imminent demise, aggregating from the fear of being found in a white woman’s room to the anticipation of being reported to the police by his girlfriend. Throughout the story, Bigger is defined by his rage and anxiety. Eventually, Bigger is arrested and during trial is defended by a communist lawyer who argues that Thomas’ actions are a consequence of whiteness in america. Bigger is sentenced to death, it is during the period leading up to his execution that he contemplates his past relationships and desire for a decent life. In the end, Bigger Thomas reckons with his understanding of himself and the presence of systemic anti-Blackness in the united states.
The title Native Son asks readers to reckon with the dismemberment of Black cultural identity and the inherence of Black exploitation in the construction of Bigger Thomas’ environment, extending to both the ghettos constructed to contain Black communities and the constructed perceptions of Blackness that Bigger Thomas navigates throughout the story. In The Fact of Blackness (1952), Franz Fanon responded to Native Son by raising the point, “In the end, Bigger Thomas acts. To put an end to his tension, he acts, he responds to the world’s anticipation.” Fanon offers that Bigger’s behavior reflects both personal and cultural circumstances. Bigger’s disorganized actions are often fearful reactions or displacements of rage that he feels toward the everpresent stereotypes of a bestialized Black man assigned to him and to Black people through the colonial construction of Blackness. While these circumstances are useful in understanding Bigger, his characterization has been deeply critiqued by James Baldwin for being a reductive caricature with little humanity, though in this criticism he adds dimension in Many Thousands Gone.
“ the isolation of the Negro within his own group and the resulting fury of impatient scorn. . . . [I]t is this climate, common to most Negro protest novels, which has led us all to believe that in Negro life there exists no tradition, no field of manners, no possibility of ritual or intercourse, such as may, for example, sustain the Jew even after he has left his father's house. But the fact is not that the Negro has no tradition but that there has as yet arrived no sensibility sufficiently profound and tough to make this tradition articulate. For a tradition expresses, after all, nothing more than the long and painful experience of a people.”
Baldwin clarifies that the internal conflict Bigger faces is not due to the absence of Black tradition itself but rather there is an absence of public consciousness to interpret Black life. My father was strategic in representing himself within the Black traditions he participated in. In his line, he playfully utilizes both superficial and nuance themes of this character to leverage control in how he is understood creatively.
“ the isolation of the Negro within his own group and the resulting fury of impatient scorn. . . . [I]t is this climate, common to most Negro protest novels, which has led us all to believe that in Negro life there exists no tradition, no field of manners, no possibility of ritual or intercourse, such as may, for example, sustain the Jew even after he has left his father's house. But the fact is not that the Negro has no tradition but that there has as yet arrived no sensibility sufficiently profound and tough to make this tradition articulate. For a tradition expresses, after all, nothing more than the long and painful experience of a people.”
Baldwin clarifies that the internal conflict Bigger faces is not due to the absence of Black tradition itself but rather there is an absence of public consciousness to interpret Black life. My father was strategic in representing himself within the Black traditions he participated in. In his line, he playfully utilizes both superficial and nuance themes of this character to leverage control in how he is understood creatively.
When reading this story, I found myself asking: How do we grapple with ourselves when we don't feel like good people or we don't agree with our actions? What does justice look like for victims and perpetrators? When we cross the line, do we fall beyond the bounds of care? For Black youth who are born into a punitive judicial system, the way that we answer these questions as a society becomes material. Accountability and remorse can not be beaten into us, they are choices that people make for the well-being of themselves and for their communities.
As I matured, so did the stories of my father. I reflected on and encountered stories where I was critical of him and his decisions. Although, what I was most critical of were the storytellers. It troubles me to hear stories written carelessly or with contempt, stories where his life is defined by his death. It was the stories that I didn’t trust that became my Native Son. These critical moments required me to parse through tropes of troubled black boyhood so that I could confront issues of responsibility, blame, and punishment. One of the consequences of being a Native Son is being labeled a troublemaker and then a delinquent and then a criminal. The consequence is the anticipation of imminent social death or corporeal death. While black protest novels persist among stories of black death, it is important to me that my father’s story is not limited to the worst things to ever happen to him. I want to live in a world where black boys can grow into black men. When they don’t - let us hold our dead with care by listening to understand, let us honor them by acknowledging the artful ways in which they lived and considering their experience as complete.