Jasmine Sealy: “Let’s have difficult conversations – let’s get messy”
The author on connecting to Bajan culture, mixed identity adolescence and being whatever people want her to be
Hi, welcome back to Mixed Messages! This week I’m speaking to author Jasmine Sealy, who is of Barbadian and British heritage. Jasmine’s beautiful debut novel, The Island of Forgetting, is out on Thursday, and follows a family-owned hotel in Barbados over six decades. I was interested to hear how growing up in Barbados affected Jasmine’s sense of self – our conversation uncovered that, and so much more. Read it below.
How do you define your racial identity?
As a teenager, I went through a phase where I was insistent on defining my identity for myself and pushing back on labels. I think everyone goes through that, where you’re defining yourself in opposition to how other people see you. Now I’m in my 30s, I’ve come out the other end and I’m very much whatever people want me to be – I don’t mean that in a passive way, it’s more that I find I’m more open to conversations around identity. When I’m confronted with somebody who tries to define me, I think, “tell me more about why you feel that way”.
Now, I self identify as Black and mixed - it was a long journey to get to that point. I grew up in Barbados, a majority Black country where race and class play off each other. What makes someone Black is not just skin tone, but all these other cultural markers, to do with class, the way you speak, where you went to school, what you wear. I had teachers at school flat out telling me that I wasn’t Black and was never going to be. I had a whole identity crisis, but now I’m comfortable.
So you didn’t feel like you fit in in Barbados?
Not really. I still feel like a tourist sometimes when I go home. My mom is from Liverpool, so I wasn’t just mixed, I had a foreign mom. I never had a strong Bajan accent, spent summers in the UK… I don’t want to make it sound like I was pigeon-holed or put into a box, because you make choices when you’re young on the kinds of people you surround yourself with or what you’re interested in. I could have corn-rowed my hair and put on a stronger accent, or made more of an effort to connect with that culture, but I didn’t because I was insecure.
When you’re a kid, you blame so much of what’s going on internally on your surroundings, but now that I’m an adult, I’ve realised so much of that comes from the internal. Sometimes my not fitting in wasn’t as much about race as I just didn’t fit in with those people. When I met a group of oddballs and bonded over partying, that was a significant shift for me. I stopped thinking of race as a defining aspect of my being.
Did you ever speak to your family about your racial identity?
Never. My mom is not very introspective, but she modelled a life for me that was more impactful than many conversations of understanding who you are, the work that you do and the impact you have on people.
My dad passed away recently. I don’t remember having these conversations with him when I was a kid, but now I wish I’d had more. It’s strange to think about that link to my likeness and identity being severed with him being gone. A big part of me reconnecting with my culture was staying at my dad’s house and eating golden apple fruit off the tree. It’s a lived practice rather than an intangible, ephemeral idea. For my son, that’s not an option anymore, so I’m going to have to restructure my relationship with the island, my culture and my Blackness and how it exists in a world without my dad.
I’d love to talk about The Island of Forgetting – did your mixedness influence the story in any way?
The book is divided into four sections, each narrated by a different character. The final section is set in the present day, narrated by a Black and white biracial teenage boy, Nautilus. He’s also gay, and exploring the cross sections of his identity. I poured a lot of my personal experience into that, and how being biracial affects his friendships and relationships in Barbados, as well as his own blind spot. There’s a scene on a beach, where his friends are deciding whether to sit on some private chairs owned by a hotel. Nautilus decides he’s going to plop down on one of them, but he doesn’t understand that sitting on that beach chair is less risky for him than if one of his friends did that.
How do you think the conversation around mixedness needs to develop?
I think we’re in a mixed identity adolescence. We’ve moved out of the mixed childhood, where we didn’t have vocabulary to talk about ourselves. Now, we’re having difficult conversations, everyone’s trying to lay down rules and I don’t know if it’s easier or harder to be a mixed person right now. It’s an exciting time if you’re open to it. I think you're allowed more than ever to define yourself, and have a platform if you desire. At the same time, that platform means you have to be open to critique and other people’s opinions. A lot of people can’t handle that. But let’s have these difficult conversations, let’s get messy.
What’s one of the best things about being mixed?
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen my mixed identity as a gift. I can see multiple perspectives, but that’s necessarily something you can’t develop if you aren’t mixed. I think Blackness is something to be celebrated, because historically Black people have been subjugated and marginalised, but what makes me mixed is that I’m half white, and I don’t think that whiteness is something that needs to be celebrated.
Can you sum up your mixed experience in one word?
Journey.
Buy The Island of Forgetting here. Next week I’ll be talking to DJ Vanessa Wilson. Subscribe to get Mixed Messages in your inbox on Monday.
Enjoy Mixed Messages? Support me on Ko-Fi! Your donations, which can start from £3, help me pay for the transcription software needed to keep this newsletter weekly, as well as special treats for subscribers.
Mixed Messages is a weekly exploration of the mixed-race experience, from me, Isabella Silvers. My mom is Punjabi (by way of East Africa) and my dad is white British, but finding my place between these two cultures hasn’t always been easy. That’s why I started Mixed Messages, where each week I’ll speak to a prominent mixed voice to delve into what it really feels like to be mixed.