“I love my country but I’ve never missed it”

I finally left in August, even though just about everybody would tell you that I left from 2005. Just because some place is your home doesn’t mean you can live there. Jamaica became a base, a place to fly out from. I was in New York so much that customs started to suspect me of living there illegally. There was nothing more depressing than coming back to Jamaica and to be immediately thrust back into a life of trying to make money doing something I had no wish to. I did not start writing to find a new way to make money (boy would that have been a mistake-—even though I’m not doing bad, thanks for asking) but I did get a degree in creative writing so that I could teach. And earn some money. I love my country but I’ve never missed it, perhaps because I have never forgotten the reasons I left.

– Marlon James–who is now teaching literature and creative writing at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota–writing at his blog about his own experience of “colonisation in reverse”, and explaining why many Caribbean writers and artists are still driven to seek creative fulfilment “elsewhere”.