Growing up white in Grenada as a missionary kid. Questions on identity...
Looking for honest perspective here, including the uncomfortable parts.
I'm a white American guy in my 40s. My parents were missionaries who brought our family to Grenada when I was 7, trying to convert people to American-style fundamentalist Christianity. I ended up staying until I was 19. So in a real sense, the reason I was even there started from something colonial. My parents showed up to change people's beliefs, not just to live alongside them.
But as a child I wasn't running that show. I went to school there, made real friends, picked up the culture, the music, and the creole. Grenada just became home to me in a way that's never really left. Even decades later I code-switch into Grenadian Creole English when I'm around other islanders, and if you asked me where I'm "from" in my heart, it's Grenada before it's anywhere in the US.
I've been chewing on the tension between those two things for a while. My family's reason for being there was basically a form of cultural imposition, but my own attachment to the place and the people feels totally real, not performed. I don't want to claim something that isn't mine to claim, but I also don't want to disown something that actually made me who I am.
So genuinely curious what people from the Caribbean think about this kind of situation. Does it land differently for you depending on how someone carries it, like claiming "home" or using the language? Where's the line for you between someone with real roots there versus someone overreaching or appropriating the culture?
Not looking for reassurance, I'd rather hear the real (even critical) take!