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Volume No. 1 Issue No. 92 - Monday March 05, 2007
QUALITATIVE BYTES: Why Write Exile? Echoes Of Class Definitions
Steinberg Henry


I write only because people of Dominica are still in my psyche, a wonderful, loving people who gave meaning to my life and sustained me. I will forever seek to strengthen, encourage and support tu.

You the people, we the people must keep watch. Our leaders can be dangerously divisive. I speak here not only about politicians, but about corporations, business people caught in a hurricane of greed, class, race and color hatreds. Lawd, I speak of churchmen and women.

I speak too about the poor who have become rich or have risen to positions of authority in all societies. In this great birthing travail, in these times when Earth is healing itself, old battles, family feuds, hidden histories are emerging, surfacing, burgeoning.

I speak too, to the Caribbean nation-state, its security, its legislating to protect its remaining natural and human resources. I speak to divisions among us.

From my humble seat in a new York house, I am haunted still by thoughts of an island that many, like me, were forced to leave. Skilled people. Their stories are almost the same.

One Dominican Harvard-trained professor left his last set of clothes worn, on a river stone, changed into another and headed for the island�s airport. Rivers flood.

It is painful, always painful. But the pain is soon gone, dissipated in the opiate of this new city rapture, its challenges, its struggles, its opportunities, its dangers, its anxiety, depressions, its narcissism. But we hear island music and immediately reminisce.

In this advanced social milieu, I may forget, but when we remember, you should hear the things we Dominicans talk about.

It is all about economic, trade and market possibilities, the leaders, the 70s, the music, foods, water, the sea and rivers, the incompetences, hurtful experiences, discrimination in such a small society, school-days, who�s loving, sexing who, who left who, who�s divorced, who�s dead, social change movements, weather, each other and the next trip home.

This nature topography haunts over distance. I am aware of Dominicans who have nothing to do with the country.

They lock it off, or so it seems to them, whose dreams as they age, find manifest references in placid bays, country shops, long lost friends, loved-ones, surreal flora settings. Some ran from persecution, debt, broken relationships, and political victimization.

But all come here to make something out of their lives. Seldom are Dominicans here arbitrary people, launching into the business of productivity with a passion incomparable. In us, we carry gifts of industry and insight with class, even with pride.

We are global as much as any other. Indeed, we who live in exile may as well be defining exile. We do more. Here, we teach, nurse, doctor, construct, direct, guide, create, lead, legislate, fight, and pay taxes.

Many may even wear ignorance as brand clothing. I recall meeting a group of Dominican men in Brooklyn, sitting on a step outside their residence on a warm Friday night.

They asked whether I wanted a drink. I hesitated. I was warned quite quickly by one of the gentlemen that this is America and I better doe play pwayjijay, because in America, all of us is the same. They had a wage. I didn�t.

(Extract from Steinberg Henry�s �Cool Readings� as he continues to explore diasporic experiences).

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