About the Author

I was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1984. When I was four years old, my mother and father migrated to the United States in search of a better life. They left me, along with my younger and older brothers, in the care of my wonderful aunt and uncle. I remember my childhood in Haiti as a time filled with love, protection, and a strong emotional foundation.

At the age of eight, I boarded a plane and joined my parents in Brooklyn, New York. Although I was happy to be reunited with them, that happiness came with a quiet grief. I had to relearn my parents’ family structure and their ways of expressing love. I had to understand how authority worked in our home while also trying to adjust to a country that felt unfamiliar and overwhelming.

Living as an immigrant child was frightening for me. I was trying to understand a new culture, a new environment, and a new version of my family while still holding on to the memories of the life I had left behind in Haiti. I often felt caught between two worlds. I was Haitian, but I was also becoming American. I did not always know how to explain that conflict, and I did not always feel that others understood it.

When I entered junior high school, I became the target of relentless bullying. The taunts, humiliation, and cruelty followed me everywhere. They followed me into my classrooms, my home, and eventually into my sense of self. The bullying caused me to question my identity, my family, and my place in the world. At the time, my family and I did not fully understand the trauma that bullying was creating inside me.

The stress and pain began to affect the way I interacted with other people. Over time, the experiences I was carrying undermined my positive social behaviors and encouraged maladaptive ones. I became more guarded, angry, and disconnected. Pain slowly shackled me down and changed me little by little. Because I kept everything inside, no one noticed the pain that was shaping me.

Eventually, my fears led me to join a gang. I was looking for protection, acceptance, and a sense of belonging among my peers. The more time I spent with them, the more I began to imitate their behavior. I adopted an image that made me appear tougher than I really felt. I wore a mask.

For the first time since leaving Haiti, I felt safe among people who seemed to understand me. They gave me the sense of brotherhood and acceptance that I had been searching for. However, that belonging came with a cost. I began to confuse fear with respect and silence with strength. The mask protected me from appearing vulnerable, but it also prevented people from seeing the pain underneath.

Beneath my anger and defiance was a young boy who was still trying to understand where he belonged. I was carrying the grief of separation, the confusion of immigration, the pain of bullying, and the pressure to become strong enough to survive. I did not have the language to explain what I was feeling, so my pain came out through my behavior.

As I grew older, I began to recognize that many of my choices were connected to wounds I had never learned to name. My anger did not come from nowhere. My need for acceptance was not a sign of weakness. Much of what appeared to be defiance was actually fear, grief, and a desperate desire to feel safe.