I feel ready to double down on the promise of writing, on the power of sharing stories, and on our ability to build bridges with language and knock down walls with words.
In Thousand Star Hotel, the bilingual writer’s struggle with expressing himself in English becomes a metaphor for the immigrant’s struggle with navigating the host nation’s hostile-yet-lucrative social terrain.
To be forced to speak in the language of the colonist, the language of the oppressor, while also carrying within us the storm of Jamaican patois, we live under a constant hurricane of our doubleness.