It Was Always Jamaica

Natalie Preddie has always known she was Jamaican. She grew up with the food, the music, the church friends, the fried dumplings on Sunday mornings. But knowing you are Jamaican and fully claiming it are two very different things.

Growing up mixed race, Jamaican father, white English mother, she spent most of her life not quite landing in either world. Not white enough at school. Not Black enough at church. Living in what she calls ambiguity.

This year she said if not now, when. And she started digging. Into the archives. Into the colonial records. Into the gaps where her ancestors' names should be. What she found was heavy, beautiful, and clarifying all at once.

Natalie is a Canadian travel journalist, TV host, and creator of Beyond the Resort, a series about Caribbean culture through Black-owned businesses and authentic local experience. She has written for National Geographic, Travel and Leisure, the Washington Post, and the Globe and Mail. She is a boy mom of three. And this conversation goes places most conversations do not.