Carry On Friends: The Caribbean American Experience
Carry On Friends has an unmistakable Caribbean-American essence. Hosted by the dynamic and engaging Kerry-Ann Reid-Brown, the podcast takes listeners on a global journey, deeply rooted in Caribbean culture. It serves as a melting pot of inspiring stories, light-hearted anecdotes, and stimulating perspectives that provoke thought and initiate conversations.
The podcast invites guests who enrich the narrative with their unique experiences and insights into Caribbean culture and identity. With an array of topics covered - from lifestyle and wellness to travel, entertainment, career, and entrepreneurship - it encapsulates the diverse facets of the Caribbean American experience. Catering to an international audience, Carry On Friends effectively bridges cultural gaps, uniting listeners under a shared love and appreciation for Caribbean culture.
Carry On Friends: The Caribbean American Experience
Introducing the Caribbean Diaspora Experience Model™ (CDEM)
This episode introduces The Caribbean Diaspora Experience Model™ (CDEM). The model offers a guide for understanding how Caribbean cultural identity forms, evolves, and expresses itself in diaspora communities. Based on real-life experiences and stories shared through ten years of podcasting, this model validates the diverse ways people connect to their Caribbean heritage outside the region.
The 6 Lenses of CDEM
- Where You Start Shapes the Journey
- Where You Live + What You Seek = How You Connect
- Cultural Anchors Keep Us Rooted
- Your Identity Will Shift—That’s the Point
- Cultural Identity Influences How We Show Up at Work
- You’re Not Either/Or—You’re Both/And
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I'd love to hear if this model resonates with your experience and which elements reflect your journey.
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A Breadfruit Media Production
Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Carry On Friends the Caribbean American experience and I am excited that you're tuning in to listen to the podcast. If you're just tuning into the podcast, know that this year the podcast is celebrating its 10th year anniversary. Yes, the podcast officially launched January 2015, 2015 and we're in 2025. And so we're celebrating 10 years and I have to say that this year feels like one of the best years of doing the podcast. The audience is engaged in the newsletter. So if you are not locked into the newsletter, I'm going to make sure I put the link in the show notes for you to sign up to the newsletter. I don't know. You know it's some really good topics that we're talking about and everyone's really engaging. So if you're not locked into the Carry On Friends newsletter, make sure say you're on, go and sign up and you get something in your inbox every week about culture, about our experience, about the diaspora, about life all of them things there. And of course, there are some updates about what's going on with the podcast and ting. So make sure that you keep it locked there. So this episode is just me and that's how I want it. Because may you agor reason? Because I'm excited to share something that I've been working on for a while and that something is called the Caribbean Diaspora Experience Model, which I shorten as CEDEM, is a model to better understand how Caribbean cultural identity forms, evolves and expresses itself in diaspora communities. Now I'm going to get more into this, but the model is grounded in real-life experiences my own family experiences, my experiences, my friends' experiences, my experiences, my friends' experiences and, of course, stories shared through the podcast. Cdem offers a simple and relatable way to explore the complexity and identity outside of the Caribbean region and and sharing some of that with each other. The model incorporates observations about how different people experience their Caribbean identity, based on when they migrated, where they lived and what stage of life they were in, and I realized that we needed a way to talk about these experiences that validated them and helped us to understand ourselves and each other. So the Caribbean Diaspora Experience Model has six components, and I'm going to go through the components with some personal examples. So the first component is starting points matter.
Speaker 1:When and how you first connect to Caribbean culture fundamentally shapes your experience. So someone who moved as an adult, like my mom did, has a completely different foundation from someone born in the US, and that's pretty obvious to most people. Right when you begin your journey with Caribbean, culture shapes everything else. I see it in my own family. My experience moving here as a teenager gave me really strong cultural bonds, while my brother, who moved, that too has a very different relationship with Jamaica entirely the difference with my story, though. Unlike many barrel children and we covered an episode of that in the podcast who came years after their appearance, my whole family arrived together on the plane my mom and my three brothers, and this gave me a different experience from my peers, my classmates and even some members in my family, and I didn't realize how uncommon this was until I went to a one-woman play, maybe in 2015. And that's how I realized that this was not a common occurrence in the migration pattern. I think in my life here in the migration pattern, I think in my life here, I've only met one other family, that they all arrived together. So the model identifies six starting points, from people who grew up in the Caribbean and moved as adults, to people born outside of the Caribbean with limited cultural connections, to folks who regularly move between the worlds. None of these starting points is better than others. There's just different journeys and with each journeys comes its strength and challenges. So component number two where you live changes how you connect.
Speaker 1:One of the other most eye-opening experience that I had was when I moved from Caribbean-rich, jamaican-rich Brooklyn to Wisconsin, where the Jamaican community was much smaller. And to this day people are asking me like how you reach out Wisconsin. But let me tell you, my uncle had been living there for years, so there was a sizable Jamaican community there and many years later it has grown. So in Brooklyn in the nineties I was immersed in dance, art, culture, caribbean foods, music, events, pots, everything, everything. I didn't have to work hard. You step outside and music, a blast, caribbean culture, carnation, cook shop, whatever right.
Speaker 1:But in Wisconsin it was very different. My uncles and my cousins and their friends from back home they were there, but they had just as strong Jamaican accents and cultural practices as people in Brooklyn. It's because they were intentional about making sure that they kept the links for lack of a better word with culture. There was a sound system that even was birthed out of Milwaukee. I want to say it's called Cataract. But they had Jamaican clubs, they had restaurants and again, people always say Milwaukee, wisconsin. And yes, I want to say that, and if I thought the Jamaican community was a sizable community with intention of going to this store to get Jamaican products or this place to get Jamaican food, there's an explosion in Milwaukee where there are Jamaican restaurants all over and I am proud to see it and it's just a sight to see. So big up Milwaukee you don't know.
Speaker 1:And so that experience living in Milwaukee, looking at my uncle's experience before who had lived there longer, what happened after I moved back to New York and just go back to visit it showed me something around connection. So, as I mentioned, living in a place like Brooklyn and other places people might live like Toronto, you know, florida, miami with large it's going to be totally different from someone who lives in a small town somewhere in the middle of the US or further out in some other state where you're not going to have such a large population. In bigger communities like New York City, maintaining the culture happens almost automatically. You have a lot of food places, there's music and events all around. My move from Brooklyn to Wisconsin contrast in my life showed me how geographic context shapes how you connect to culture. You know, in Brooklyn at the time when I moved and still now Caribbean culture was everywhere in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1:It really took deliberate effort back then. You know Milwaukee isn't Brooklyn, while there's a lot more Jamaican places. There's still a deliberate effort. You know you don't walk out and hear you know music blasting or there's a restaurant at the corner. But you know that you have to be intentional that you're going to go to this Jamaican restaurant and they get ready for the experience. The long lines, them kind of line, them long. I watched the people in Milwaukee, specifically Jamaicans. I cannot tell you if there's Trinities or anything. I've just really come across a vibrant Jamaican community.
Speaker 1:By then I'm sure other people have moved, but the Jamaican community, specifically in Milwaukee, created spaces and businesses to maintain cultural connection in a way that I didn't have to in New York, right. So they created mini markets like little grocery stores so you can get your Jamaican products. They had clubs where they, you know they would make sure that the promoter could bring a Beres Hammond or, you know, you had Cataract who had a sound system. So we can still, you know, get to experience the dancehall culture and the sound class culture. Those were things that they did. That was intentional. So while you feel like, oh, you won't go to Brooklyn, where a lot of Caribbean people are. When you move to smaller places, you have to work harder to find them, but when you do find them, you create a stronger bond to the culture because you find your people.
Speaker 1:The third component is about cultural anchors that help ground our identity. So there are certain tangible elements that ground our cultural identity food, music, language, celebration, even the way of the church and how our family is structured right. That is very distinct in the way that we experience culture Now. There are certain elements that keep us connected to culture, no matter where you are. For me, music was a huge thing when I was younger. I knew all the dances. You know I'd song clash tapes. You know I stayed current in dancehall culture. Language was another anchor. When I moved from Jamaica to New York, my language changed. It was more emphasized and it was something that I had noticed when I moved here with my uncles, because I had uncles that were living here since they were 10. And I was like why? Why? They sound like they just left Jamaica right. When I went back to Jamaica for the first time to visit after I moved, my cousins said to me that my accent was thicker and stronger than when I was in Jamaica for lack of a better word, as Jamaicans would say my top more brawling. You know my chap bud, and that was because I was using language to hold on to the culture.
Speaker 1:It is something that we are holding on to as part of our cultural identity. Food, of course, is a constant connection, right? I don't even have to explain this. Right? We see all the stories about jerk chicken, you know oxtail, whatever it is right, but essentially the food is what we exported, you know, and it disseminated across the diaspora, and that's how a lot of Caribbean foods are popular and it holds memory. You know language, food, music, they, you know they hold memory and we hold on to them as part of our cultural identity. In addition to memory, it's really cultural knowledge. The way we cook rice and peas, you know, is very different. How we cook curry goat, the reason why they're like when Jamaicans, the oxtail is just a certain way. So it holds cultural knowledge and you know some of the things that we do, the way we do church, or the way that you know our families are set up. You know, growing up in the Caribbean, I lived in a multi-generational home. Most people grew up living in a multi-generational home and we kind of replicated that when we came here. So when I lived in Brooklyn there was a lot of us living in the house different generations and so those are elements of cultural anchors that ground our identity.
Speaker 1:Number four is what you've probably heard me talk about before in an earlier episode of the podcast, but I'll get into it. Our cultural expressions change as we age. How we connect with our culture naturally evolves as we get older, and that is normal. I just developed the language for this for this. I've been observing this for at least almost 10 years, I would say definitely the last six to seven years. I knew it was there, I just didn't have language to say it the way that I've just said it, which is our connection to culture naturally evolves as we get older, and that is normal. When I was younger I was focused on trends like the music. You know what's hot, all of these other things. But as I got older I have kids and you know I'm working like things shift, so I can't keep up the same way. That doesn't make me less Jamaican, it just makes me connect to different aspects of the culture. I'm more now focused in the music that I did enjoy growing up and of a certain era. I do still check out some new music, but the difference is I don't feel like compelled to keep up Like I hear it and I like it, I'll consume it, but I no longer feel like, okay, it is my job to make sure that may keep up with the latest.
Speaker 1:And I tell myself like I don't want to be an old person in a young person's space. You know I remember growing up. You know like we knew when there was a big person in our space it was just like, eh, you try too hard, I didn't want to be that person. So you know, there's some things that I just said. You know what this is young people, things, let them have them things right.
Speaker 1:Losing my grandmother and other elders in the family made me realize that I needed to do more in documenting our stories. As a podcaster, I regret not sitting down and recording my grandmother having these stories. So, as a podcaster, I regret not sitting down and recording my grandmother and having these stories. And you know I'm a natural family historian and archivist. Like I kind of do these things naturally and most of us do right them. Keep everything, like we keep pictures. I know this is a thing with me, my grandmother and my mother. At the time we used to quarrel about who get which pictures, and even now I have some pictures that my mom is like where get these pictures from? I said every time I went to Jamaica I'm going to take them, carry the picture then back Right. So I'm at a point in my life where it's about understanding how my cultural identity is evolving, preservation and also handing off some of this to my children.
Speaker 1:And I covered cultural expression, this evolution from young to old, and preservation in an earlier episode of the podcast called Preservation, culture, identity and the Evolution of the Caribbean Self, and this came out of the newsletter. I asked the newsletter audience about how they were keeping up and I got really rich responses that gave me the confidence to finally reveal or share the Caribbean diaspora experience model, because it was just data that I now had. A lot of times it was observation and I said I think this is what's happening, but there was no way for me to confirm, and so that's what it did, right, and I shared the audience survey in two episodes that I did with Style and Vibes, and Style and Vibes is a podcast that I produced through Breadfruit Media and I did it in Style and Vibes because Style and Vibes is mostly we talk about music, and so the first episode we did it's called Our Love for Dancehall Remains, but Our Relationship to the Music has Changed, and there we just kind of went through how people were evolving and changing with the music. The second episode was keeping up with Dan saw a listener's perspective where I kind of reiterated some of the findings, some of the surveys and having more conversation. I'll make sure I put those in the show notes right.
Speaker 1:I'm at a place where my expression is different. It's not better, it's not worse. It's just where I am for where I am in my stage of life. And I want to be clear that I'm evolving because of age and where I am in my life. But not because I'm at that place means that someone else is at that place. There are different underlying motivations that can impact that. I was talking to my cousin the other day that I grew up with. I'm going to tell her so when we did young, we did just do road, and no, we don't do road again because we're like we did a lot of that when we were younger. So do. Road is not the same thing, and so there's other underlying factors that impact how it evolves. But it will evolve right, and so those episodes, we kind of talk through some of that evolution, all right.
Speaker 1:So component five is work and professional identity. Now, this aspect was really the impetus why I started the podcast. I felt like I needed some career mentorship and advice and I wasn't getting it and I said you know what? Let me just talk about this and you know, among other things, and kind of see, you know what conversations happen, but how we express our Caribbean identity at work is a huge part of our experience. And when I say Caribbean identity at work and how we express it, that's different ways. Caribbean people, we do a lot of verbal expression, obviously, but we do a lot of nonverbal expressions, right, and some of that I've learned over the years and I've done workshops about this.
Speaker 1:There are some things that are strength and some things that they can impact us negatively at work, depending on the type of work we do, the industry that we work in. The last workshop that I did was Confidently Caribbean, and that was in 2020. And before that, in 2016, I did another workshop around being Caribbean in the workplace and how we can navigate better and set ourselves up for success, addressing some of the challenges and pet peeves that we all have, which I now look at very differently, and I had to learn that the hard way because I was like I don't want to do this, I don't want to do that, and a lot of that is from how our parents kind of told us how we should be at work right. So, based on where we work and sometimes the type of work we do, some of us code switch, some of us bring with full self. So if you are working at one of the major hospitals in Brooklyn or in New York I said Brooklyn you might walk the hall and chat Pierre Patois, you show up as yourself, because the hospitals in New York particularly have a lot of Caribbean people working in them, so you can show up that way.
Speaker 1:And then for most of us, we are strategic about when and how we express our cultural background. So, as I said, navigating my Caribbean identity in professional spaces has been a significant part of my professional journey and I've experienced the challenge of being perceived as unfriendly or mean when I was simply just being serious, heads down doing my work and this work ethic that I was told to have, which didn't translate as such in the workplace. Right, I've mentored other Caribbean professionals who sought me out because they needed guidance. I'm someone who understood their cultural background. That was something that I did in one role in particular, because this particular employee was very frustrated and felt disrespected and I knew what they meant, because as a Caribbean person, we saw it as disrespect, but in the workplace it wasn't seen as a big thing. And then you've heard me share the story of interviewing a young man for our position. He was Jamaican and I asked a typical question in an interview asking him what his weakness was, and he saw his accent as a weakness rather than an asset.
Speaker 1:So those were some of the things that kind of gave me some early desire to start the podcast and why career was one of the main and early focus and still ongoing focus of the podcast. So the blog itself has been around for 12 years and the podcast 10 years. And so since I started carryonfriendscom, career has been an ongoing theme because it is what pulled me to start Carry On Friends and obviously in the podcast we've talked about that. So what I learned through the 12 years, particularly doing the podcast, doing a lot of the work on myself and learning and all of the other books that helped me, is that my Caribbean work ethic is part of the legacy that my parents handed over to me, and the desire, and sometimes the pressure, for me to succeed is based on sacrifices, right, but at the same time, there's an element to that that we just have to be mindful of, and it's again, it's just how much we turn it up or turn it down, based on the playing field that we are in. So, based on the job and the culture of the job that we have, that we just have to know how to adjust the dials as we go in to the workplace.
Speaker 1:And lastly, the sixth component is embracing both slash and identity. So one of the most important things that the model embraces is that we're not either, or we're, and right, being fully Caribbean and American or British or Canadian at the same time is our reality. So I identify as a Jamaican woman and I've also embraced the other aspects of my identity, and I also cover this in another episode, right. So, depending on who I'm talking to, you know I'm Caribbean American. I'm a New Yorker, I live in Brooklyn, midwest. All of these aspects are part of my identities and I don't have to choose right. The ability to be fully all of those identities simultaneously is something I see as a strength and not something as a source of confusion, and it's not something that I have to choose between.
Speaker 1:So why did I create this model? So, as I mentioned before, I started Carry On Friends because I needed mentorship from someone who understood my specific cultural background, and I didn't get that. And so, through starting Carry On Friends as a platform and through the 10 years of podcast interviews, I learned a lot of things that I had to do my own self-development, and which is what Carry On Friends has been a place for not just for me to interview guests and share them with you, the audience, but it was a source of my own self-development. I saw patterns emerge in how Caribbean people experience life in the diaspora and as I listened to the stories, there are times that I'm making connections real time in the episode by saying, oh, I had another guest who kind of said this, or I noticed this right, said this, or I noticed this right.
Speaker 1:I wanted to create this model to help us navigate this cultural journey with more awareness and intention than I had available to me, or something to help Caribbean people understand, because I don't know if the generation before had the language for it to help me understand and process how, over time, you know, the longer I live away from Jamaica, what does that mean for me? Or how my culture is evolving, right? Or how I'm evolving alongside my culture and trends, et cetera. All right, so you're thinking how does this model help you or people? This model gives language to understand maybe your own experience, or recognize feelings and challenges that you have that others might have. It could also help explain why you might connect to your Caribbean identity and culture differently than your parents, your siblings or even your children, or how your children will maybe eventually connect differently, right? The model validates that the cultural connection looks different for different people and there's no right way to be Caribbean. It also validates that changes in how you express your culture across your life is just normal and not a sign of you're losing your roots. It can actually help you be more intentional about maintaining the cultural connections that matter to you most Now as a community.
Speaker 1:This model can help us respect the diversity of the Caribbean diaspora experiences rather than judging who's Caribbean enough, and you know a lot of people who were born in the diaspora. I found that through the podcast, they're the ones who are having their identities challenged by not being Caribbean enough. You know, they weren't born there, they were born here, et cetera. Right, I think this model can help improve communications between generations by creating some kind of understanding of why they approach culture differently. And a perfect example of that is when my grandparents' generation, so when my grandfather left Jamaica to move here, some people in that generation, and also depending on which Caribbean country you come from, you, didn't want people to know that you're a Caribbean Versus. When I came here in the 90s, everybody wanted to tell everybody they were a Caribbean right. And so, in summary, the Caribbean diaspora experience model it's not academic, it's not theoretical, it's built from real experiences, again, like mine, my family, my friends and maybe yours.
Speaker 1:I will be going more into each of these more deeply in the coming months. I just wanted to give a very high level view of the Caribbean Diaspora Experience Model because it's the first time I'm introducing it and I'm really excited to share this work. I would love to hear if this model resonates with you and how. Which elements reflect your experience. So we talked about everyone has a different starting point.
Speaker 1:Where you live impacts how you connect with culture, cultural anchors like food and music. They ground our identity. We talked about our cultural expressions changed as we age. We talk about work and professional identity and we talked about the embracing the both slash and identity. Right. So, instead of either, or it's both and right. So let me know which elements resonate with you. What would you add, what would you change? And stay tuned over the next couple months because I'm going to go deeper into the model. My hope is that this model gives us a better way to understand ourselves, connect with each other and celebrate this beautiful complexity and layers of the Caribbean diaspora identity. Thank you for listening to me to the very end. If you're here at the end of this recording, thank you for listening Again. This model is not just my professional work through Carry On Friends, but my personal journey of understanding who I am as a Black woman, as a Jamaican, as a Caribbean woman in America, and so, as I love to say at the end of every episode, until next time, walk good.
