My origin story until relatively recently was this: I was born at Nuttall Hospital in Cross Roads, Kingston, Jamaica. And all four grandparents were Jamaican. This came up more frequently than you might imagine – I’m a light-skinned Jamaican. An uptowner, as we say here. A privileged minority, very likely descended from enslavers.
I was relieved this apparently did not apply to me, however, because the only ancestor I knew anything about until relatively recently was John McCaulay, a Scottish-born missionary who was lost at sea in June 1905, while returning to Jamaica following the death of his wife from tuberculosis. His four children were thus orphaned – the only boy was my paternal grandfather, Gerald.
So whenever I was asked, “But you’re not Jamaican, are you?” I responded: “I…
