I was at a pivotal time in my life, fresh off a breakup, trying to rediscover who I was and who I wanted to be. I was turning 25 that year, so honestly, right on schedule for a quarter life crisis.
I had moved back in with family for a bit, and my parents and I started having a lot of open, vulnerable conversations we hadn't had before. One day I was sitting at lunch with my dad, just talking about life, about travel, about the things we wanted to do. I started talking about how I wanted to move to France and continue with my French learning, something they had encouraged. We were musing about language fluency, and how we assume different personas when speaking another language. Then a horrible thought hit me. Since I couldn't speak any Haitian Kreyòl with my parents, I didn't know who my dad was in his mother tongue.
Let me explain.
I used to give my parents a hard time, half joking, half not, for not teaching me Haitian Kreyòl, their mother tongue. It was an intentional decision to shield me from learning the language. Before you cast judgment, they did so out of concern for my safety. Many immigrant parents made that same choice, scarred by their own harrowing experiences growing up in America with a strong accent. In Brooklyn, New York in the 1980s, being Haitian had an extremely negative association. If other people knew you were Haitian, you were looked down on and even targeted for violence in some instances. So, many Haitian Americans during that time chose to assimilate to American culture out of fear for their safety and a misplaced worry that an accent might lead to discrimination. My parents, after being scarred by the Brooklyn of the 1980s, figured it was safer for me to grow up speaking only English. I only understood Haitian Kreyòl through the French skills I learned in school instead.
As I got older, the stigma lessened, and I convinced them that being multilingual was nothing to be ashamed of, but actually a source of pride. My parents and I would try to only speak Kreyòl. We'd start a conversation in Kreyòl and, like clockwork, default back to English within the hour.
In the short moments we would practice Kreyòl, I realized something stranger. There was a weird feeling that our relationship was not the same and that I wasn't talking to the same people when we spoke in Kreyòl. I also noticed the same thing with French. When I switch languages, a different part of my personality shows up. The jokes I make in French aren't the jokes I make in English. Some of that is just skill level, sure, but it's also true that humor itself shifts with language. What lands as funny in one doesn't always translate to the other.
That's when it got a little scary. I realized I didn't actually know my dad in his mother tongue, the Haitian version of him, the one whose Kreyòl stopped growing in his 20s when he moved away from family and from Flatbush, Brooklyn. While this was terrifying and I felt a sense of loss for not understanding the fullness of my parents' personality, there was a silver lining.
Language works like a time capsule, literally in the words you use, but also figuratively. The Kreyòl my parents speak isn't the Kreyòl being spoken today. It's Brooklyn diaspora Kreyòl, frozen somewhere in the 80s and 90s, full of phrases and rhythms that are unique to that place and that moment. That's the literal version, but when they speak it to each other, there's a silver lining: they're talking to the early 20s versions of each other, the ones figuratively kept in that time capsule. It's a portal back to who they were before life and defaulting to English pulled them somewhere else. They have that sweet moment of connection in Kreyòl with each other forever, maintained between them and their parents.
So what's the bigger picture?
When I started Nou Ni, I was on my own journey to figure out who I am, and it became clear I didn't want my culture to disappear with my life. Looking at my American lifestyle, I realized the problem wasn't just the language gap. To be frank, I'll never have the ease and fluency of a native speaker. Language mastery takes a lot of hard work and dedication! However, I realized if I wasn't careful, the Haitian American version of me that I maintained with the older generations of my family would disappear.
The older generation of my family will not be around forever. I know one day I'll look around at a holiday and I'll be the older generation. And if I'm not careful, the Haitian version of me would disappear. I would quietly become only an American version of myself, one that didn't carry the culture forward. The Haitian version of me only existed inside my family.
Our parents won't be here forever. Many of us already have parents who have passed. If the only place our culture lives is through them, it leaves with them too.
That's the real foundation of Nou Ni. Finding ways to bring tradition into a fast-paced, busy American life, especially here in New York, where so many of us first gen kids are doing this same balancing act, without losing the roots. I want Haitian food, Haitian customs, and of course, my favorite Haitian pâté, to live fully inside American life.