"Marriage is a worthy ideal to aspire to, but a truly wise woman doesn't count on it."
 | By Rachel Poser Sunday Opinion Editor |
The '90s TV show "In Living Color" had a recurring sketch called "Hey Mon" featuring the Hedleys, the "hardest-working West Indian family." Mr. and Mrs. Hedley were Caribbean immigrants determined to achieve the American dream — and judgmental of anyone whose work ethic was not up to their standards. In one episode, Mr. Hedley comes home from work and starts removing his layers of uniforms like a Russian doll. "When I was your age," he tells his "lazy" son, "I was a maintenance man, a carpenter, a cabdriver, a cook, a hospital orderly, a security guard, a tour guide, a fish cleaner, and an Amway distributor — all in the same day." |
Naomi Jackson, a novelist whose parents came to the United States from Antigua and Barbados, sent me a YouTube clip of a "Hey Mon" sketch when I proposed that she write about her childhood for Fortunes, Times Opinion's new series on the psychology of class. Jackson grew up in a West Indian community in Brooklyn like the one lovingly parodied in "Hey Mon" — a striving immigrant enclave where, she says, her family, friends and neighbors believed in the "gospels of education and hard work." |
Financial independence was prized, especially for girls, who were taught never to rely on a boyfriend or husband. In Jackson's essay, published today, she writes that the "self-sufficiency of West Indian women and their suspicion of others, particularly men, are bound up together." As a child, she was warned that men could leave her, hurt her, squander her hard-earned money. Many of the women in her community kept a stash of "vex money," secret savings that were to be spent only in case of emergency brought upon by a once stable romantic situation "suddenly becoming vexed." Jackson reflects on how these dueling messages of empowerment and danger combined to shape her as a person and as a romantic partner. |
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