Who Ya Ma Is!?! The Nature of My Cultural Identity

I must say that in contemplating the first three questions for this blog post, I was overwhelmed by the various cultural dynamics that have influenced my life and upbringing. Its a challenge to condense your cultural experience into a few paragraphs when you know you're not even mentioning the tip of the iceberg. Lets get started!

 I grew up in New Providence better known as the city of Nassau the Bahamas or the “242” (which is the area code). Yes, it is better in the Bahamas, but like other places in the world, where there are communities there are social issues.

Living on a 21x7 island created some interesting dynamics in terms of who you socialized with and what you considered Bahamian culture. Within my family and amongst my peers at church and school, I intermingled with people from the various rungs of society. I had friends and family who came from poverty and others from the “upper crust.”

I was born into a middle-class family with a big extended family on both my mom and dad’s side. However, I gravitated towards my mother’s side of the family as I had many cousins there who were close to my age. We were like a small tribe, many of the elders at the church that I attended would refer to us as the “Cartwright tribe” (the surname of my mom’s family). We often got into a lot of mischief, fights, and fun as we explored the neighborhood of my grandmother which is known as Chippingham.   

As a child growing up, my world was made up of private school (Queens College), my middle/upper-class home neighborhood called Highland Park, Johnson Park SDA church and the ghetto which was Chippingham and a place known as "The Grove."These sections of my world intermingled frequently. I had a very colorful form of education to say the least.

Another part of my cultural upbringing was the fact that anyone could be related to you. People of my grama (grandmother) and my mom and dad’s generation would often ask a fellow Bahamian who they did not know, “Who ya ma/pa is?” This was to see if they knew your people and if they had any relation to you. I adopted this approach as I learned that it was wise to know whom you were dealing with.  

My parents also afforded me the opportunity to travel. I have visited many places in and outside of my country. When I was able to afford it myself, I took the opportunity to travel to other countries on my own. I have been blessed to visit such places as Hawaii, Cuba, Ghana and Scotland to name a few. Traveling the world has opened my eyes consciously and unconsciously to so many possibilities, and has given me a deep appreciation for other cultures and humanities creativity.   

Church was a very big tradition in my family. I am a third generation Adventist and the culture has definitely formed my worldview. It has been my habit in traveling to different countries to always find an Adventist church if I was staying there over the weekend. Though we have issues within our faith, there is a spirit of brother and sisterhood that we share; and I have found it to exist wherever go.  

Art has been a huge part of my cultural upbringing. My family home was decorated with art and my parents heavily encouraged it. I enjoyed reading comics and watching cartoons. Though I have had formal training in visual art, my art was also heavily influenced by Junkanoo.





This is a Bahamian art form, celebration and competition that occurs around Christmas time where various Junkanoo groups would prepare all year to show off their brilliance through music, dance, craft and performance energy. As a child, my father would wake my brother and I very early in the morning (around 3pm!) to enjoy the festivities. As an adult, I have worked in the Junkanoo shacks pasting costumes and carving large images for parade floats. Junkanoo is deeply seated in the Bahamian cultural identity; it is deeply imbedded in my own.
I would be committing a sin if I don't mention the beach. The beaches of the Bahamas have been some of my greatest teachers in showing me beauty, wise hardship and endurance. It is on the beaches at home where I have often heard God speaking to me. In short #beachislife.

My cultural upbringing has made me a very patient person in various aspects of my life. I have learned to endure and to trust the slow developing process of anything I am working on. In working as a visual artist and as a common laborer shoveling sand in the scorching sun, I have learned that consistency and time will move mountains. As the saying goes, “When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time.”

Travel and the experience of other cultures has made me a more open individual to learning and considering other cultural perspectives. However, it has also made me more cautious and aware of people as I have experienced the positive and negative side of people’s cultural understandings. Though I know that I have a home base in my country, the last several years of traveling have made me feel like a nomad. Though I am Bahamian-born, as I move along my journey, I feel more like a world citizen. On one of my trips back to my country, I expressed to my wife that home did not feel like home anymore. However, I have been able to form a sense of home in the last two years with my budding family.  

There is a constant influx of foreigners to America’s shores. When I first came to America to live for an extended period, I had interactions with Americans but it was more so with black and Latin Americans; I never lived in a predominantly white environment. Dawson’s Creek was one of my major reference points as I entered this world. However, I see now that this show romanticized and stereotyped what I thought “white America was going to be like.” However, there were some who lived up to the stereotypes portrayed; after all, “art mimics life and then life mimics art.”

After watching Dawson’s Creek, which was based on a group of high school kids who aspired to be visual artists, and literary gurus, I left thinking that most middle to upper-class Caucasian folks loved the Beetles, Star Wars was their second religion, enjoyed “Starbuck-esque” hang out spots and had huge vocabularies from reading such books as the Hobbit when they were five, To Kill a Mocking Bird at 9 and the writings of Hemmingway and Dostoevsky by age 14. However, much of this fell to myth when I met one of my good friends Will who was very soft spoken, loved working in a foundry, hated Starbucks, loved to go mudding and had never read a Hemmingway book in his life (he is just one example).

As cultures collide and intermingle, cultural values morph and change. I feel that cultural identity and values can be something very rigid and lucid; it all depends on how open a societies culture is to outside influences. For example we see a growing change in America where the minority is becoming the majority. I think that certain cultural values will change but not be cast aside. Take Thanksgiving for example; it is an American holiday but I have seen various families from the Caribbean, India and Europe Celebrate it in their own unique way.

 From what I understand, cultural identity refers to one's sense of belonging to a particular group and is formed through a particular process of being a part of a particular culture. According to our reading, there are three steps in the formation of our cultural identity: (1) unexamined cultural identity (2) cultural identity search (3) cultural identity achievement.

I have often explored my cultural identity through art and I have come to realize that I come from a group of people that can be very relaxed and passive in nature; this can be a good and bad thing. Through my interactions with people in and outside of my culture, I have adopted certain practices to counteract the negative aspects of my people’s passive nature. However,  I try to promote and share the positive aspects of it, which can bring moments of deep reflection and creativity.

            Though I have had the opportunity to interact learn and grow in various cultural settings and societies, I still desire and adhere to many of my cultural ideas and customs. I feel confident that I am in the cultural identity achievement phase; this has been solidified in these past few years in the seminary.  I will never lose my Bahamian accent and I have always considered it wonderful and beautiful. I will always love guava duff, "stew fish and Johnnycake".



            I will always take time to relax and slowdown and I believe that I will always carry an easygoing temperament. I will always remain deeply spiritual and go to church on Saturday. These are some of the things that my interactions with other cultures will never change in me.