Can One Person Really Have Two Different Home Countries?

My Dad taught me to read before I started school. I still remember lying on my stomach in the kitchen, at an early age, and reading out the newspaper headlines to anyone who would listen. A few short years later, I began writing poems and stories about the world around me.

When We Go Home is my debut picture book.

From an early age, I recognized that the cadence of my parents’ accented words differed from mine. They regularly recounted stories about a country they called home. Long distance phone calls and air mail letters edged with red and blue stripes contained loving messages from grandparents and other family members I had never met.

When We Go Home is inspired by my first visit to Jamaica, the Caribbean island of my parents’ birth. I hope readers of my book will recognize that once upon a time, their ancestors from long ago, or their grandparents, or even their own parents were brave adventurers. They took a leap of faith and left their home country to establish a new home in a different country.

All my life I’ve had friends who were born in one country, while their parents were born in another. It was only as adults that we discussed our experiences. I wrote the book to encourage dialogue between grandparents and parents with the children in their lives--to share their stories of what it was like to grow up in another time or country.

I want readers to understand the world is so much bigger than the country where they were born and live. And that no matter where their ancestors were born or where they were born, as citizens of the world, they can call more than one place home.