This is a stream of consciousness, no script, no notes, just me sitting with something I’ve been carrying for a long time and finally letting it come out in real time. My Caribbean accent, learning to sound American, moving through French and Spanish and English and feeling like a completely different woman depending on which language is coming out of my mouth in that moment, and how none of that is an accident, how all of it is colonialism and assimilation showing up in the most intimate place there is, which is your own voice.
I talk about growing up hearing my accent get corrected, learning early that survival meant softening myself into something more digestible for other people’s ears, and what it actually means to code switch when it’s not just slang or tone, when it’s your whole vocal inheritance, the sound of where you’re from getting quietly edited out of you over years without you even clocking it was happening.
No outline, no performance, just me thinking out loud about decades of shape-shifting and what it’s actually taking to come back home to my own voice, in every language I speak.
If you’ve ever caught yourself changing your accent for a room, or felt like a stranger in your own mouth, sit with this one.
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