Queenie

by Candice Carty-Williams

All of my grandmother’s responses come with a Caribbean frame of reference that forces me to accept that my problems are trivial.

I remember laughing loads when I wrote this line. Here’s Queenie, this twenty five year old second generation Jamaican who is going through this biggest pain she’s ever known, trying to explain heartbreak to her seventy something grandmother who has lived the sort of life Queenie couldn’t begin to imagine. Of course, this isn’t solely Caribbean grandparents. All of our grandparents had to navigate a different kind of hard life. Not having social media has probably saved their minds from a lot of extra trauma, though.