I am working on a project with my professor that involves understanding and looking into the history and presence of the Asian diaspora, widely speaking, within the Caribbean and the Caribbean diaspora. You or your friends have probably heard of Asian Jamaicans, and Asian-Cubans but no one that I have talked to has heard of Asian Haitians. My task is to look into the Chinese migration to and assimilation in Haiti. Not biracial individuals, but Chinese people who have decided that Haiti will become their home for themselves and generations after or within a time. This topic and project are special to me in more ways than one. I can understand how other regions migrate and the presence of gene flow within a community, whether small or large. I also understand how to look for information with little to no presence. It can help me understand my heritage as a first-generation Haitian-American student who has few family members who have passed oral history reports from generation to generation. I have always thought my identity was just a Haitian-American girl who grew up around the Haitian culture that was familiar to my parents. It is different from my grandparents or the greats before them. The current and past are essential to understanding the migration of people and the biggest anomaly in the human race, identity. 

As a biology student, you are wired to do experiments to test hypotheses. You can replicate other experiments to see if the results are the same and the conclusion identical. However, this project has influenced my way of finding information and piecing other outlets together to form a greater understanding. In a way it’s similar to biological research, it just doesn’t require chemicals and math. When this project was first introduced to me, I was ecstatic because I labeled myself to be a curious individual. This wasn’t a topic I normally thought about but it resembles my need to understand my great and great great grandparents migration to Haiti. I immediately agreed to take on this topic because it can strengthen my research skills and assist in the excitement of learning new ideas and information. I hope my takeaway from this project will be the chance to recognize those that are descendants and ways this community has impacted Haiti as seen with many other countries in the Caribbean. However, I am disappointed that I will not live my cinematic dream of sitting in a library and going through archives with thousands of opened books surrounding me. I looked forward to the experience of learning more about Haiti and its culture. I have never heard of Chinese living in Haiti. The family members or Haitian citizens that I did ask, have always said they never had direct contact but are familiar with the people. I look forward to working on this project and learning about a culture and group of people that are very unfamiliar to me.

Citation: in progress..

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