AlieNation: The Imitated Life

By Jayma Anne Montgomery

"One day I will belong." This was the narrative of my childhood and the mantra that has fueled me through much of my adult life. What happens when you fulfill the so-called American dream only to find yourself feeling more estranged than ever before? AlieNation is my six-volume memoir that is divided into a two-book series. The Imitated Life contains the first three volumes of stories that explore my quest to assimilate my Jamaican heritage with American culture.  It further details my struggle to reconcile the Black American racial normative, the complex dynamics of my blended family, and the impossible standards of modern womanhood with a life that proves far more complex than widespread narratives would have you believe.  If you sometimes find yourself feeling distant or disconnected from your own life, I hope my stories bring you laughter, healing tears, companionship, and hope along the way.  This book is my bold proclamation that belonging is overrated.  Join me in welcoming categories that embrace nuances rather than pretending they don't exist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jayma Anne Montgomery
• Release date: Apr 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223492252

Book preview

AlieNation

AlieNation

The Imitated Life

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Jayma Anne Montgomery

Dedication

In loving memory of Aunt Lou, Uncle Eric, Grandpa Tommy, Grandma Bernice (Chiquita), Uncle Junior, and Uncle Claudius

And to the resilient people of Jamaica, my motherland, marching on until Zion

Acknowledgments

It would be impossible to appropriately credit everyone but it’s worth trying. I thank G-d for this life He has blessed me with, out of which my stories were born. Thank you, Mom for being so transparent in sharing your past with me and for all the hard but necessary decisions that have led to all that we are enjoying now. Daddy, thank you for loving me so well that I never longed to meet my birth father. Thanks to my little sister for the good years we spent at Muccio Drive.

I am so grateful for my wonderful husband who has patiently endured my marathon creative bursts, wild ideas, over-enthusiasm, and absent-mindedness throughout this entire process. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner in life.

To our best-friends Monica and Austin Disney, words can’t express how thankful we are to have journeyed through this much of our lives together. Here’s to those late-night video chats brainstorming how to save the world from itself. A heartfelt thanks to my mother and father-in-law who have always treated me like one of the family and are two of the most genuine people I know.

Shout out to my aunties, uncles, and cousins for those amazing summers we spent in the Bronx. To the many friends, neighbors, spiritual mothers, and spiritual fathers who we have been blessed to know over the course of our many, many relocations thank you from the bottom of my heart for being in our lives and loving us well when we needed it the most.

And to Dr. Timothy Gombis for encouraging me to take my writing seriously. Thank you for the push.

Thanks to the editing and publishing team at Write My Wrongs for bringing out the best in my writing. Many more thank yous to follow, Lord willing, in book two.

Write My Wrongs Co, United States

www.writemywrongsediting.com

Copyright © 2023 Jayma Anne Montgomery

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without written permission from the author.

CONTENTS

Prologue

VOLUME I: IMMIGRANT STORIES, COLORED PEOPLE, AND THE AMERICAN DREAM

Arrival

Stranger, Immigrant, Black Girl

Barrel Child

Eating Gilbert’s Grapes

Telephone Games

Close Encounters

The Great American Hoax

Buried Things & Borrowed Treasures

VOLUME II: THICKER THAN WATER

Bitter Fruit

Bad Mama Jama & Kid Sister

The Name Game

Fallout Girl

Just Like Peas & Carrots

VOLUME III: TIGERS & LILLIES

Feminism & Caribbean Matriarchy

Prodigal Daughter

Wi Likkle But Wi Tallawah

Lamentations & Hair Therapy

Of Wombs, Tombs, and Fetal Shrines

Robbing the Grave to Resurrect Me

About the Author

PROLOGUE

Humans are divided into different clans and tribes, and belong to countries and towns. But I find myself a stranger to all communities and belong to no settlement. The universe is my country and the human family is my tribe.

—Khalil Gibran, A Poet’s Voice

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The journey starts out the same for all of us. From the gentle ebb of our mother’s womb, all is warm, dark, and muted. If we could recall it, we might label it a blissful, nine-month soak in a hot tub. On the appointed day at a specific hour, we’re called forth from this watery cradle, whether we are ready or not. Powerful, rhythmic forces intensify over hours, shoving us through a passageway too narrow for our neonatal crowns. We’re launched into the chaotic disarray of a delivery room or inflatable tub. Determined, purposeful hands torment us with cleansing rituals, a battery of tests, and firm swaddling. All the while, our eyes are assaulted by blinding white light, our ears by the shrill beep of medical monitors and collective hum of human voices. It all must seem so cruel, and yet it is a necessary part of the process. It isn’t until we’re placed against the warm skin of our mothers that we begin to feel at home again.

My flight across the Caribbean Sea to America was reminiscent of this moment. Once again, forces beyond my control carried me to a confusing and terrifying new place. In time, my senses adjusted to the cacophony and revealed to me all the wonders and hardship of this new land.

All of us begin life strangely, but some of us never stop feeling like strangers.

In September of 1989, scrawny five-year-old me—skin baked golden brown by the tropical sun and resolved to hide my inner trepidations—took my first steps on American soil. My memories following those first few years are haphazard and unclear, like peering through the eye of a camera with fingerprint smudges on the lens. What I recall most vividly is the torrent of unpredictable emotions that raged through my young body as I struggled to make sense of my new life. My mind created an intricate jigsaw puzzle of people, places, and events I have yet to fully assemble. As I grow older, some images gain clarity or fit together with more precision, but I still can’t see the whole picture. Vivid details I didn’t know were missing make their way back in daydreams and flashbacks. Part of me hopes that final piece never materializes, lest it turn out to be a keystone that rearranges the entire puzzle.

The circumstances of my immigration were borne out of necessity, economic hardship, and desperation. Five-year-olds aren’t typically given a say in such things for good reason. Had I been provided with a choice, I would have chosen to stay. I didn’t know we were poor, and I didn’t feel any of the desperation that dictated our lives. I just remember being loved, safe, and happy. In retrospect, I realize this is a credit to the efforts of my mother and my surrogate family rather than a credit to the island. Nevertheless, leaving Jamaica still felt like a betrayal.

I didn’t know then that when you leave someone or something behind not by choice, you never trade your allegiance to them. I assimilated well enough to call America home many years ago, but my longing for Jamaica never fully went away. Assimilation, though necessary, comes with a price. It created an unwelcome wedge between me and my homeland. I morphed into a cultural hybrid over time. I began to lose some of the things about me that made me unmistakably Jamaican. I could no longer ease into the dialect without a great deal of conscious effort. I became perpetually uneasy with myself. I looked and sounded too American for most Jamaicans and too Jamaican for most Americans. The memories that warmed me proved impossible to reproduce when I returned for visits. The sun burned too hot against my skin, and the breathtaking landscape was scarred by all the unmistakable marks of the squalor most of its inhabitants lived in . I’d never seen it so clearly before. My homeland was at once beautiful and tragic.

My native people now seemed to eye me with suspicion and envy. At a glance, they could sense I’d gone a foreign—a colloquialism for Jamaicans who’d made new and better lives for themselves in other countries (usually America or England). These silent interactions made me feel like an imposter. America had left its mark on me, and there was no possibility of being at home in Jamaica the way I had been before I left. And yet, America had its own ways of not fully embracing me. The best I could do was partially belong while carrying around suitcases full of the things about me that still made me a foreigner. I could never find a comfortable place to store this luggage in my life, so it has become an extension of my body. I guess this makes me a permanent traveler in some ways, always ready to pick up and move on from situations that don’t have room for me and my many belongings.

I have come to consider myself a resident of an invisible world in between my two countries, accepted in some ways and yet not in many others. My customs, norms, and cultural influences are a strange fusion of coping mechanisms unconsciously constructed from my efforts to adapt to America without completely losing the Jamaican in me. My history and present life are now an uneasy marriage of these two vastly different and sometimes opposing existences. This is, to say the least, an exhausting way to live, but I know of no other way of living.

When I examine my American experiences, it’s clear to me they were funneled through a well-intentioned channel of inaccuracy and inauthenticity. After all, what country doesn’t go to great lengths to instill national pride in its people? I also recognize the internal and external crises I’ve faced made it necessary for me to undergo a series of self-evolutions. I no longer view myself in the same way, and I no longer view my role as an American citizen, or a human being for that matter, the way I did before. I’ll share some of these trials with you and demonstrate how they’ve reshaped me into a more resilient and authentic version of the person I was meant to be.

I will say the changes happening externally—beneath my feet and within the social climate—have proven far more unsettling than any personal strife. The America-That-Was when I arrived in the late 1980s is not the America-That-Is in 2023. Some of what I believed about this country turned out to be untrue, in part due to my own naivete but also because of the indoctrination of superlatives and exceptionalism that were drilled into me from the very beginning. Still, the country I thought I knew was at least able to convey a semblance of idyllic middle-class bliss for upwardly mobile families like mine. There existed a sinister underbelly lying in wait for the perfect moment to shatter this façade of security, given the right opportunity. I’ll explore this complex, elusive cornucopia of harmful ideologies that has further shattered my sense of belonging to this country.

As a reserved child and an awkward teen, it was easy to buy into the idea my insecurities were due to a lack of some intangible yet critical quality that would permit me to naturally fit in with my peers. I didn’t understand it wasn’t about any particular trait I lacked, but rather the many unconventional features I possessed that set me apart. These unchangeable factors created a sphere of otherness that made it easy for those around me to identify and accept but nearly impossible for me to come to terms with. The All-American prototype, which paves the way to popularity, self-confidence, and a milk-and-honey existence, was never possible for me. The missing link was never just about being an immigrant. No amount of assimilating Jamaican customs and mannerisms to American ones was going to make me less female, less dark-skinned, and less of a Republican, Evangelical brainchild. There was no mold I could squeeze myself into or footsteps to follow in that would lead me to a life less strange and uncomfortable. It would take many years to cease the painful efforts of aligning myself with one particular tribe and embrace the fact that I’ve always been of many tribes—belonging to many of them in part but to no single one entirely. I only needed to recognize their distinctive markings and traits to recognize aspects of myself in them.

I belong to the tribe of independent, career-minded women who still value femininity, family, and domestic life; women who don’t quite classify as feminists or traditionalists. I belong to the worldwide tribe of the richly melanated who find themselves frequently misunderstood, underestimated, maligned, and misrepresented. I belong to American Christendom in all its beauty and ugliness—its deeds of charity, compassion, and faithfulness together with its misdeeds of recklessness, greed, power-grabbing, and small-mindedness. I belong to those in medicine who feel burned out, underappreciated, abused, and constantly inhibited from doing the right thing for patients and their families. I belong to the broad sphere of creativity, unique ideas, and craftsmanship that engineer astounding artwork, prose, drama, and music. I belong to disenchanted Republicans, disillusioned Democrats, third-party, independent, and nonvoters who are watching with horror as their country’s integrity disintegrates into something wild, unpredictable, dangerous, and beyond recognition. All of you are my chosen nation, and I’m your sister. I was raised alongside you in our adoptive family. I’ve laughed, wept, sighed, fumed, rolled my eyes, and thrown my hands up in frustration right alongside you. You need not feel isolated in your alienation any longer.

I’m no longer the immigrant child who stepped into the blistering fall air for the first time more than thirty years ago. I’m a naturalized citizen living in decidedly unnatural times. Jamaica was where I was born, but America is where I’ve lived most of my life. I love this dear country enough to view it with a sober eye. I can both appreciate the ways in which America has been good to me while acknowledging the ways in which it has been cruel to so many others. Its dark, unsettling history must be examined out in the open alongside its valiant, praiseworthy deeds. Those of us who are willing to love this country with our eyes wide open and moral antennae intact must become part of the effort to steer it away from toxic extremism and self-defeating internal strife.

And so I tell a nuanced and layered love story rather than a fanciful fairy tale. I speak the hardest of truths about my American experience, all my failings and misjudgments laid bare, with the goal of holding up a mirror of self-reflection. If I can be this honest about my past, perhaps my two countries can allow more honest self-reflection on how their historical pasts are shaping their present day. The least of us must be the afforded the opportunity to provide some much-needed perspective. Those of us without vast power, influence, wealth, or fame must be permitted to add our stories and voices to the madding crowd in the hopes of steering us toward a more hopeful future.

While I talk very freely about my religious beliefs, this is decidedly not a Christian self-help book. What I mean is, I have no desire to portray myself as an authority or even a leader within the diverse Christian church. I’m not a pastor, evangelist, teacher, or a theologian, nor do I strive to be. I’m merely a lay Christian who enjoys Biblical scholarship and a budding author striving to live a devout Christian life. Furthermore, I’ve purposely avoided pigeonholing myself into what Skye Jethani and Jesse Eubanks refer to as the Evangelical Industrial Complex. While this is an extremely lucrative sector, I take issue with many of its practices, politics, and unfaithful representations of Christian ethics. I have no gimmick but I do have a catchphrase, someday I will belong. The thing is, I actually believe it.

I do have a desire to reach the disillusioned Christian who is deconstructing their faith and what it means to be part of the universal church of Christ. I also wrote this book for those who have left the faith entirely because of how the institution of the American church and its people have misrepresented the gospel message. Finally, I hope something in my personal story will reach non-Christians who are curious or at least not completely hostile toward Christianity, but rather puzzled or deterred by its many contradictions, scandals, inconsistencies, and idolatries. The misdeeds and failings of some neither represent the Judeo-Christian G-d Himself nor all Christian people. I want to provide a window into the everyday struggles of living a life attuned to a greater purpose and the many trials and temptations that undermine this intent. I hope my stories challenge your preconceptions and provide a fresh perspective of what it means to be Christian in a pluralistic and increasingly post-Christian nation.

At its heart, this book is really about the many ways in which any person may feel alienated from their world. For me, this has felt like estrangement from my country of birth, my country of naturalized citizenship, American popular culture, my religious group, my racial category, career women, professional peers, and even my nuclear blended family. For you, it will look different, but what we have in common is an acquaintance with exclusion, disconnection, and loneliness. The world keeps shoving us into categories with clear margins, but our colors inevitably bleed through. Differences are only encouraged if they can be turned into a bumper sticker. If you’re an American, you’ll be familiar with the many ways in which capitalism maximizes profit by mass-producing products or recreating a business model with the same proven formula. So-called uniqueness is subject to this same programming. Personas and personalities have become things we brand, purchase, and label ourselves with. Straying from or disagreeing with one’s group, in even legitimate ways, is met with hostility and condemnation. I don’t think it needs to be this way.

I made a few personal resolutions while writing this book. The first is to avoid the pitfall of recruiting blind loyalists who only parrot what I have to say back to me. I want to be challenged and questioned, but in a manner that is thoughtful and respectful. The second is to consistently hold to my own expressed values. Rejecting blind conformity only to demand my readers offer me nothing but enthusiastic agreement is asinine. Echo chambers aren’t hard to replicate. But seeking out a network of people across many tribes who are committed to kindness, compassion, truth, integrity, respectful disagreement, the thoughtful exchange of ideas, learning from those unlike us, growing in wisdom, and maintaining good character is more than just a tall order, it’s reaching for galaxies. But I believe those of us who are wading out of the meteor storm of hyperpolarized culture wars are committed to preserving the dignity in human differences and resolved to do the hard but noble work of living peaceably together.

I invite you to join me in casting off roles, titles, labels, and expectations that do not authentically reflect your values. As you listen to or read my stories, may they spark within you a sense of connection and relatability. May they remind