Talk Story: Serena

How did Hawai‘i become your home?

I always feel like this is an interesting thing. The people that I feel that Black people really connect to first when they move here are Polynesians. I just feel like they understand. And there’s lot of Polynesians who come from the mainland, too, so that’s a connection point, but even here, somehow they like the same music that we do, they’re always down for different things. So when Hawai‘i became my home, I was actually in Papakōlea, in the Hawaiian Homestead community. I had just moved here and there were even some Hawaiians who were talking down about the area because they saw it kind of like what in our community we would call the barrio. Like it was a kind of ‘ghetto’ place but when I went I was like ‘This is not the ghetto!’ but to them it was.  That created a little bit of anxiety in me. We were going to the community with my church to ask if they needed any help with anything in the community and I was getting really nervous because I didn’t know what to expect.

I remember we went to this house and this aunty came out and she was like “Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Do you want water, do you want anything?” And it was in the place that was ostracized, by some people, that I found true aloha. From that point on I felt like that was home, when someone invited me into their home and let me eat their food with them and drink their water. I always remember that because that for me set my eyes on really breaking down stereotypes of places in Wai‘anae, especially because in Hawaiian history that place is really sacred, but it’s been characterized as this place that people don’t want to be. I seek to break down those barriers as I try to do in my own communities.

 How old were you when you came to Hawai‘i?

I was thirteen. It was just before I started 8th grade so it was in that awkward and perfect moment because at least I didn’t have to transition in high school but it was awkward because in middle school you are still trying to figure out who you are. I felt like the only Black person at my school. And even if there were some Black kids they always gravitated to their Hawaiian side versus the Black side. I realized, “Okay, there are not a lot of people like me but we’ll make friends.”  I ended up making friends with Polynesians.

Is that how you got interested in Pacific Island studies?

I don’t know what it was, there was something about their culture that really drew me to it. Specifically, Samoan and Tongan, because I didn’t meet any Fijians until I was in my senior year of high school. There was one Fijian family of siblings that was at the high school. Definitely Tongan and Samoan. I got involved in Tongan dance and Samoan dance and that carried on into college. I really wanted to study the Pacific because I saw a lot of similarities between the Caribbean and the Pacific. Since I’m Dominican I was really, really interested.

 What were some of the similarities that stood out for you?

Diaspora movement was huge. And the idea of where someone belongs, especially if they are mixed, if they are categorized as a certain ethnic or racial group. So when Dominicans move to the US usually they are characterized as Black because they’re like “Oh, you look Black therefore you are Black.” It’s tricky because they do have African ancestry, but then that’s something that probably until this generation has been denied. Especially after the dictatorship that took place in the Dominican Republic that really divided Haitians from Dominicans. If you look at the Pacific, down in Melanesia, that line that they’re the “Black people” of the Pacific is really interesting to me because when I think of Black I don’t think of Melanesians, but then that perception and ideology of Blackness has come over to the Pacific. Even the divisions between peoples of the Pacific and then in the Caribbean are really interesting to me.

I call Puerto Ricans and Cubans, any people in the Caribbean, my neighbors, but there are always some Dominicans who are like “No, no. I’m Dominican, I am not Puerto Rican.” As soon as someone messes up your ethnic background it’s like wait, this is who I am. It becomes a defense and I see that in the Pacific too, like, “No, I’m Hawaiian” and not some other Polynesian. I’m like “Yo, we have so much connection.” I’m really interested in identity. Where do you belong? That question.

For the Caribbean, I really like the work of Junot Díaz because he seeks to write how the diaspora is still connected to the Dominican Republic no matter where they go and that’s really important for me. I am not in the diaspora, I have always lived in the US. Part of my work that I do for the Dominican Republic is talking from the second-generation perspective of someone who has never seen the Dominican Republic but feels like they have an attachment there. Part of me and my writing is to connect back to the Dominican Republic. It’s always been a thing that affected me.

I have always felt like I belonged to the Dominican Republic and that was the side that we didn’t know much about because when my grandfather left and when my great-grandparents left they really took that history with them. We don’t know anything. One of the projects I am taking on for my honor’s thesis is writing the imagined love story of my grandparents because one was Haitian and one was Dominican and they were married in the time of the dictatorship.  What does that mean for Dominicans and Haitians today? How does my story still attach me to the Dominican Republic?

It sounds like a beautiful meditation on your ancestors, on love.

This is a major part of my project, I borrowed the term “dreaming Black love” from Tagi Qolouvaki, but I created its own meaning for me. I defined that in my proposal as just a love for Blackness, but then I thought we really have to think deeply. What do I mean by "dreaming Black love"? I was looking at my grandparents’ story and looking at the topic of silence. It’s just that the love is not just for Blackness and its history, but the embracing of the silence and unraveling of that silence. Then I have to define "love." I won’t leave something like that unfinished. I defined "love" as as a force that can be spiritual, emotional, that comes out physically and that binds the wounds of history, and, most importantly, casts out all fear. It casts out the fear between people. That was something very specific that I wanted to draw out in a story about love between Dominicans and Haitians. Going against the ideology that a dictator and his presence has created.

My mentor for the project, Shawna Ryan, just won the American Book Award and she wrote a phenomenal book. I loved how she did imagery. It is really awesome to have a mentor who has that capacity. I draw from Edwidge and I draw from Junot and I draw from Julia Alvarez in my work. I told my dad that my dream is to be in a place with all three of them.

I just finished reading Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban and she wrote this part where Pilar, who is the granddaughter in New York who was born in Cuba but moved with her mother over to New York, and she says “I started to dream in Spanish.” That was something that really hit me because actually, my whole life I have dreamt in Spanish but then could never speak Spanish fluently. It would always break me when I would be in front of someone who could speak Spanish fluently because I knew in my dreams I could. I’ve made it my aim since I was in middle school to be fluent and it’s still so hard.

How much do you feel that the language issue factors into how you connect to Dominican culture?

Only recently have I figured out that it’s okay to make mistakes when you’re learning a language. That has always been something that’s had a tinge in my heart. My grandpa has always been fluent in Spanish, but his is Ecuadorian. My mom told him when I was born, “Please only speak to her in Spanish.” And he never did. I have no anger toward him, but that’s something I wish would have happened. I mean, Dominican Spanish is totally different, but when I communicate at least I would have had a base, or something.  It’s just something personal to me that I have a hard time with, I just so badly want to be fluent so I can communicate with the people I want to communicate with that mean a lot to me. I get so frustrated that I can dream in Spanish, speak fluently—I know it.  I could speak fluent in these dreams and totally respond. It hits me, why can’t this just happen in the real world? Why can’t your brain just become fluent if you’re dreaming? It’s definitely hard but it also allows me some access. 

I think the hardest part is that I have never been to the Dominican Republic so some of the things I write about do not have authenticity. I’m trying to see if next summer I can go to the Dominican Republic and Haiti and the places I write about to be there for a couple of days and take it all in. At the same time, it’s a little bit hard because you’re imagining history today, to imagine what this was like 50 years ago. To not know French or Kreyol is something that makes me anxious, but then I guess that is okay because I know there are Haitians who can speak Spanish. I just need to know one.

I know that there is a tendency for Dominicans to connect with Taíno roots, but let’s get real. It’s just a small percentage. I get that there is a connection, but what’s so wrong with being Black that that is the only way you can identify? You have African ancestry and so much of your culture comes out of it.

The other woman I interviewed for my project here in Hawai‘i was Dominican and I asked her about Haitians and she addressed some things about Haitians but grazed over the actual question. My question was how she felt about Haitians, but she said some things but totally skipped over that question.    

I’ve always heard people talk badly about the things that I am, like “Filipinos are the Black people of Asia” or "Dominicans are the Black people of the Caribbean," but even going back to that woman, she said when I asked her about the dictator, “My dad was good friends with him but when he took a turn he became the most cruel person that I have ever heard of....” I wonder if still that ideology of Blackness traveled with her to Hawai‘i in the way that she ignored my questions. And even with my dad—it’s not that my dad rejected his Haitianness, he just never mentioned it. He was just Dominican. I wonder in terms of memory being in the blood, if it psychologically travels in such a way that it just registers that is 'hey I’m Dominican' and they just completely ignore it. I’ve even heard of Haitians changing their last names to be Spanish because of that anxiety. So I think about, for myself, what does it mean to a Dominican that I carry a French last name?

How did you come to connect to Blackness through your Haitian and Dominican identity, given that you grew up at least in part in Hawai‘i?

My dad isn’t really as connected as even I am and growing up he would always say that Dominicans are Black people who speak Spanish. That was all he said. So my perception was that we were totally Black. No one could take that from me. All my family that I grew up with was either Ecuadorian or Mexican and I said to them “Oh, yeah, Dominicans are Black people who speak Spanish!” And they freaked out and said, “Dominicans are not Black!” And it freaked me out because then I felt like I was lied to my whole life. Then I looked at it and I thought, well, we have African ancestry, why wouldn’t we be Black? But they were so adamant that we were not Black and that always intrigued me.

Then when I met with certain Dominicans they were like, “Yeah, we’re not Black.” It was really intriguing to me that they disregarded their African heritage. I didn’t even learn about the dictatorship, actually, until quite recently. When I had an understanding of what was going on in that time I understood the reason—at least the most recent reason—you would reject Blackness, especially with the Haitian massacre in 1937. I was reading Edwidge Danticat’s Farming of Bones and that’s how I connected to Junot Díaz, I was doing a project because I was really, really concerned that someone would reject a part of their identity out of fear. Also, I just feel like when you reject a part of who you are you run into an identity crisis. There’s a part of yourself you’re not acknowledging. I also like that Junot Díaz addresses the topic of silence about this history that generations don’t pass on and they have to learn from other sources because their families are dealing with the trauma of it all that silences.

When you have a dictator, his narrative is the only narrative, until he dies. So what I love about Edwidge and I love about Junot is that they are using their voices to counter the dictator narrative.

I connected to my Blackness through being Dominican because I refused to ignore that we have African roots and I embrace my Haitianness because I feel honored that I get to be an example of a bridge between two people who loved each other, where in the actual country there is a lot of strife. I always felt I connected to my Blackness through the Dominican Republic.

I asked Junot Díaz a question through email about what do you do when "100% Black" people, whatever that means, say, “you’re not Black enough, or you’re too light skinned and you don’t understand the struggle we go through.” So I asked him, “What do you do when a Black person tries to remove your Blackness from you?”

He always says great things. He always has that one-liner. And he said, “You know, my ancestors tell me who I am and that’s enough.” I embrace that. Whenever people try to do that now I don’t put up a fight anymore. I do defend myself, but rage-wise I don’t put up a fight because I know who I am and this is my ancestry and you can’t take it away from me.

Are there things about your growing up here in Hawai‘i, here in the Pacific, that prepared you to go through that process in a way that might be different from the process of connecting with Blackness that other Dominicans have?

I actually learned most of my Dominican history in Hawai‘i, which is interesting. And, I came into contact with my first Dominican person beside my family here in Hawai‘i, which was even more interesting because we weren’t even on the mainland and I am on the opposite side of the world from where Dominicans usually are. The sugarcane was one of the symbols of the histories of the Caribbean and the Pacific. That was a big connection, sugar cane, what that means and what that symbolizes for a lot of people, especially Haitian workers. For my mom, who is Filipino, we do, we have ancestors who worked in the cane fields, but her memories are “I used to eat the cane and suck on the syrup.” It’s such a fantasy and sweet, but when I think of sugarcane I don’t think of that, based on my history. Sugarcane is definitely something that I connect to here in Hawai‘i, in terms of past-present. Definitely the movement of people and also embracing who you are and what your ethnic background is.  I find it easier to do that here because I do feel the atmosphere of aloha that is really around and the family orientation that is a part of Local culture. This probably sounds bad, but when I moved here and found out White people are the minority here I thought, “Wow, this is the dream come true for so many people.” I don’t face as much brutality as many of my paisanos, my countrymen, experience. I think living in Hawai‘i as a “minority” is a bit freeing. It gives me a bit more freedom as a Black person to be who I am. When I go back to the mainland all the time I have to remember what it is like.

Have there been opportunities for you to connect to Afro-Latino or Afro-Caribbean cultures here in Hawai‘i? Do you feel like you have been able to practice heritage cultures here that matter to you?

There is the Hispanic Heritage Festival, which I love because I am like, “This is where they all are!” It’s funny, because there are not a lot of Dominicans here so when we find each other it’s like miracles and miracles and we’re excited! Someone came up to me in the gym two weeks ago and he asked, “Are you Latina?” And I was like “Yeah.” He goes, “Oh, what are you?” And I said, “I’m Dominican.” He was trying to flirt with me, so we can skip that part of the conversation... I asked him if he was Puerto Rican, automatically, because there are a lot of Puerto Ricans but not a lot of Dominicans. He was like “Yeah, I am!” So, I would say that for the most part the Latino Black people that I come in contact with in Hawai‘i are Puerto Ricans. Through them I am able to connect with Puerto Rican food, which, thank God, someone can cook for me! My favorite food is Caribbean food, specifically Cuban. If someone cooks it for me…it’s the best.

There’s not a lot here that’s Dominican. There are Puerto Rican churches but I think you would really have to be invited to a certain place to experience the culture. I feel like I know more Mexicans than any other group, which is always interesting.

I even consider the top part of Colombia as part of the Caribbean. I’m watching a show on Netflix called The White Slave. I thought the concept was pretty interesting, that she was raised by a Black slave family. I thought the show displayed a good presentation of the integration of the Spanish and Black people into Colombian culture, and how thatcolonial situation comes to produce the present generations today in Colombia. I love watching Celia and I love the real life story of Celia Cruz embracing her Africanness. For me, she is just a symbol of what it could be to embrace your African heritage. I love watching her show, even though I don’t know how accurate it is. Netflix is doing a great job!

They have a salsa club at UH and the leader of it is Dominican and he said something that stuck with me: “Where I come from, we’re poor, but we love to dance.” And that says something to me not just about Dominican culture. To me, the Caribbean is very special, apart from Latin America. There’s a very rich history, a very tragic history at the same time. The music is amazing and they love to dance and I love to dance. When he said that, I thought that dance is really a means to soothe your soul no matter what you’re going through.

Because you are so connected to your Blackness and your identity as Latina and you mentioned your mom is Filipino, do you find people in Hawai‘i ever challenge you to just leave your Blackness behind?

Well, I connect with people better if we can be Filipino together. It’s funny, I have not experienced rejection. I’ve experienced idolization. Like “You’re Black??” It’s amazing. I’d never been more proud to be Black!

What do you think that is?

I don’t know, I wonder if it is just a connection, especially in this generation, that Black people are "cool." When I was in high school people were like “Oh, Serena’s the Black girl!” and “Oh, we have a Black friend.”  And I would be like, 'You don’t have any other Black friends?!' I thought I would experience rejection.

So you have experienced Black people coming from the continent saying that you are not Black enough. How do you deal with that?

Before I talked to Junot about it it would always just anger me. I felt like I couldn’t connect with the people I felt most connected to. But in my own experience of growing up in a Filipino, Latino, Black home I can connect with some other things.

I was talking to this guy for a while. He was Black, from Sacramento, and he even told me that I was not Black. And that was probably a sign that it wouldn’t work out.

Which begs the question, what is ‘Black?’ I have had had people say that I can’t be Black because of my color but then I have to say, are you sure? Because people don’t say Blackness is just based on a specific color. Is it an ideology? Is it a mindset? My dad will say that there are some White people who are Black. I was like, “Uh…there’s some issue with that.” But it is hard to define.

I’ve been interested in how Pacific people perceive Black and I remember when you and I have talked before that you observed a young Samoan girl being told by her mother that because her hair was messy and needed to be fixed that she looked like a “meauli girl.” I experienced something similar last month. I was with some of my closest Hawaiian family at the beach and there was their little girl who was this beautiful dark brown in the sun. I was joking with her like “Oh, I want to get to your skin color! You look beautiful!” Her brother was like “No, that’s black.” And they know I’m Black. I didn’t know what to say in the moment because I was thinking, “Hmm, that’s what you define as Black?” To me, she’s Hawaiian. I just see a Hawaiian girl who’s dark and running around in only her underwear and having fun. Just the way he said it. It was uncomfortable. I was thinking, “Is Oregon having an influence on you?” It was just weird. It was an odd feeling.

I wonder if some of the anti-Blackness comes from the closeness between Polynesians and Black people that you mentioned before.

Marriage is something that has intrigued me. In our grandparents generation, the idea that you can’t marry a Black person because of their perception that they are gangsters is based on film and media, which hurts me. One time my Tongan friend told me that her grandparents just didn’t want her to marry a Black person and then she looked at me and said, “Oh, but you’re still our friend.” But at the same time, they listen to a lot of Black music, they watch a lot of Black reality TV that Black people don’t even really watch anyway, so I wonder if you’re attracted to things you deem Black, why wouldn’t you want to marry someone Black?

You are about to leave Hawai‘i to go study in London. What do you think about this next chapter? Do you have any expectations?

I don’t know what to expect. I don’t know what Blackness looks like in London. It’s funny, because growing up, Spaniards were not talked about in a good light, they were the conquistadors. I’m Dominican and Filipino, too, so we were not fans. Spanish? No. But I still do have a desire to travel through Spain to just see it. Even London is built off the labor of people in the Caribbean or in Latin America and I’m interested to see that in Spain, too. It would be interesting to see what their reasons were to just find areas to dominate and colonize.

Because I still have to do research for my honors thesis on the Dominican Republic, going to Spain will be one area, just to see what the idealization was for a dictator to be Spanish because it is tied to Whiteness. That will be interesting to study there.

I actually started an adaptation of Mansfield Park. I loved the film that was made of it, just the way that she puts colonialism and slavery right up to the front. I wrote about what the delay is in Sir Thomas coming back to England. In the original, what causes the delay is not specified, but I made the cause a slave rebellion in Antigua. I wrote it as the leader of the rebellion being an illegitimate child and a woman. I’m interested in learning more about Antigua while in London. I haven’t read it yet because I need to read Jane Eyre, but Wide Sargasso Sea is supposed to be amazing. I was so happy someone did that because that character was so interesting to me because they portrayed someone from Jamaica as a madwoman and it was such an interesting symbol. Why did the madwoman have to be from Jamaica? What were British people thinking with that anxiety about "savagery" in the colonies? 

In Pacific culture, genealogy is really important. Do you think that your living here has made it possible to speak your genealogy in a way that was tough for your father?

I think I was just really intrigued that someone could recite their full genealogy. I watched someone recite the Kumulipō and I wondered how your mind just grasps all that knowledge. I know that Hawaiʻi has had an influence. When I was living in California I had that wish, but when I moved here the whole idea that your ancestors were really your stronghold became real, that gave me the strength to do what I do. I definitely believe that Hawaiʻi gave me the strength to be who I am. I wouldn’t say that in Dominican culture it’s the same.

The biggest thing is just tell me where you’re from. Which, okay, that’s another thing I felt so anxious about. Growing up I would always lie. I would say “Oh, we’re just from Santo Domingo or Santiago”, the easiest thing you could say, something that people just know. I was anxious about what they would think because I couldn’t even place where my family belonged. That for me was very personal and very hard. When you meet Dominicans they ask where your family is from and when you don’t know, it is so hard. For my story, I basically have to imagine their whole lives but have to do it in a way that is real.

For you, what would Black community in Hawai‘i look like?

I think it would definitely be a community that stands out but is an ally to Hawaiians, to not be separated because we are on Hawaiian soil. To see the beauty of Black people themselves. We are a very beautiful people with a very deep history in all parts of the world. To see it still expanding. I would say we need to be allying next to Hawaiians. It doesn’t have to be in massive activism, but definitely partnering with the community and just sharing in that aloha experience. And then, dreaming Black love with them, that love that binds the wounds of history. There is a raw history here and I think Black people are facing a history that is still being written that has raw parts in it, too. Just that connection between Hawaiians and Black people, and all Polynesians in general. For sure, because this place belongs to Hawaiians, that would be my picture of what a Black community looks like in Hawai‘i.