This has been sitting in my drafts for days because I am a planner. I wanted to have my first few posts in draft mode waiting for finalizing before posting but life does not follow a plan. My grandmother’s health took an unexpected turn last week and has reinforced that perfection is a myth and time waits for no one.
Coolie🇯🇲🇮🇳. Wife. Granddaughter. Mother. Gigi. Daughter. Black. Woman. Lesbian. Friend. Writer. Reader. Elected official. Leader. Educator.
I am all of these things. But here on Substack, I am, first and foremost, a writer. I’m here to tell my story—the story of my life, my paternal grandmother’s life, and the invisible thread that binds us. Or maybe I’m charting my journey to 50. Maybe this is just an elaborate form of journaling. Whatever it is, I am here to write.
I am the eldest daughter of an immigrant father and an American-born mother. The third grandchild and first granddaughter of my Jamaican-Indian paternal grandparents. The fourth grandchild and second granddaughter of my maternal immigrant grandfather and grandmother, a descendant of enslaved people owned by the Maxwell House Coffee legacy family.
I am the mother of five—three I birthed, two I gained through love. My wife and I are BiBi and GiGi to five grandchildren, including two who came to us through my cousin, who is more like a daughter. Our family tree doesn’t follow a straight line, but every branch is wrapped in love.
This is my lineage in the most basic format and not at all as descriptive as my results as detailed by Ancestry.com. I don’t know what I expected from Ancestry.com, but somehow, I was still a little disappointed. Nothing really surprised me, but two things stood out. First, my mother’s mother’s side traces straight back to slavery, as expected. Second, while I always knew my dad’s family was Jamaican and Indian, I didn’t realize just how much of their DNA was Indian versus African—24% Deccan & Gulf of Mannar, 13% Gujarat, 13% Bengal, 20% Nigerian.
100% Coolie.
And with that, The Coolie Chronicles were born.