[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

24847: Vedrine (pub) "Talking About My Generation" (by Nekita Lamour)



E Vedrine <evedrine@hotmail.com>

[The following appeared in the April 2005 issue of the Boston Haitian Reporter under:

TALKING ABOUT MY GENERATION
April 2005
By Nekita Lamour

Friends of those born sometimes between Christmas and New Year's are not always certain of what card to send to them. To solve this problem, I usually get a blank card for my brother wishing him a Happy Birthday, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

But those of us born around Easter - like me- are delighted to have their birthday around the holiest Christian season. Or, in early spring, if one is not religious but somehow in awe of the burgeoning bulbs, the longer days, or other signs of spring. This is one of the rare years that I didn't have a birthday around Easter. Since my birthday is in April, I am going to reflect on what those four and half decades of birthdays have meant for me and especially those of my generation.

I have been trying to define and give a name to my generation since the turn of the millennium, but I have not come to one yet. Expressions such as "Generation X" have become common since the early 1990's as a shorthand designation for people born around 1980. Those born around WWII or after are referred to as "Baby Boomers." Somehow I don't sense where people like me who were born in the late 50's or early 60's belong in terms of generation. Many around my age are probably wondering the same thing.

The “Baby Boomers� are now in their mid-fifties to early sixties. I am not 50 yet. Though I am concerned about President Bush's social security reform, I feel distant from it because of my age. Furthermore, expressions such as "Gen X," "Baby Boomer" seem to be largely a media creation. I never heard my son born in the early 1980's utter, "Wow! I belong to Generation X," although he does have characteristics often attributed to that demographic group. A very mobile young adult, he demonstrates impressive entrepreneurial and investment skills as well. When he was in the 8th grade I warned him he would be in trouble if the teachers knew he was selling gum sticks for a dime each on school premises. In high school, he gravitated toward money management in the manyclubs he was involved with. I had to drive him to BJ' s to get candy bars at wholesale so club members could sell them individually for fund-raising projects.

On his graduation day, I laughed when he said, "Gee! I should have had The class of '99 t-shirts made and sold them during graduation." He got to make 100% Haitian T shirts in college.

Haitians born in Haiti usually use the president that was in power as their frame of reference. I remember in 1980's, those of us born under Papa Doc (the late François Duvalier) used to refer to ourselves as "timoun" (children) when talking with those born under Magloire or Estimé. Having been born under Papa Doc, I guess that makes me and my generation the fillings in the sandwich between the “Boomers�and the “Xers.�

Should I define myself based on the events that occurred in the 1960s? No, I was too young to participate in significant events of the civil rights era, although I marched in anti-apartheid rallies as a teen-ager in the 1970s. I do have a vivid memory of Martin Luther King's assassination, which happened on my aunty Therese's birthday, but was too young to remember the whole movement. I can only recall that my small coastal town, Petit Gôave (of 3,000 then) looked emptier than usual. The day Dr. King died the world and my hometown were quiet and serene.

As for technology and scientific discoveries, I remember vividly listening on a transistor radio when Neil Armstrong first landed on the moon in 1969. I did not see television until I was 13. I listened to Tino Rossi, Mireille Matthieu, Sicot, Nemours and other Spanish or French music on a battery-operated turntable my father owned. I regret that I never asked him before he passed away where he got that old phonograph. I have never seen an appliance like it since. I wish I had it in my antique collection of 8-track tapes, vinyl records, and the one-piece stereo set that my brothers and I bought with our paychecks
from our first summer  jobs.

My children, of course, smile every time they see these ancient relics. They can't imagine that when my brothers and I first migrated here as teenagers, that one piece 8 track and turn table stereo provided music to the ten or so families who lived in Cambridge in the early 1970's when they gathered in the basement of the now defunct Our Lady of Pity.

Despite my children's scorn, I don't yet own a CD player, and see no pressing reason to have a cellular phone. I never bought a walkman or a VCR and don't intend to purchase a DVD either. I do, however use the computer to write, and find e-mail indispensable for communicating with family, friends and colleagues around the world. When he attended Georgia Tech, my son told me once a fellow student exclaimed, "Wow! Your mom uses e-mail!" (phenomenon not expected from a Black woman of the "in between" generation).

The events of the 1940's such as WWII or the civil rights of 1960's may seem more memorable to many than those of the women's movement of the 1970's or the busing era for Bostonians. The genesis of the technology epoch of the 1980's to its continuous growth in the 2000's is also a remarkable development.

The "Gen Xers" may be more technologically inclined than I am. The "Baby Boomers" are still reminiscing the good old 60's. I have lived the Gulf War. As a jubilee volunteer, I got to be close to one of history's most famous Pope on Easter week 2000 at St. Peter's square and the colesseum. However, I feel the "Baby Boomers" had more fun rallying for the Vietnam war than I did rallying against apartheid or removing Haitians as AIDS carriers. When I think of my aunt and those around her age, I feel they had more fun dancing Shleu Shleu than I did dancing Skah Shah.

I would like to call society's attention to my generation. We are not the youth that they have to develop programs for or worry about their future. We are not middle age folks they have to concern for their senior care, social security benefits, or retirement facilities. Somehow those in their forties now don't seem to be society's focus.

Regardless of which generation gets attention now or more recognition, I feel I have participated and contributed to many developments on this planet as a member of the forty age group. I have not remained idle and silent on issues of democracy, women's rights, educational equity, anti-semitism, or other human rights causes. What is important to me is that I am a contributing member of society and it does not matter whether the media gives me a label or not, for I have a lot to share with the "Baby Boomers," my two children, their "Generation Xers," and the world.

Nekita Lamour is an essayist, an educator, and a regular contributor to the Reporter.]