Identity as Relational Practice

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

The question of, "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” pushes me to ponder on identities as being in inseparable connection to relationships and as in continuous conversation with the collective. This reflection stems from my identitarian pilgrimage through several decades at the crossroads of art within the day-to-day, and as part of creative activations that are interdependent with life and hence inextricable from it. Born in the Dominican Republic to Lebanese and Dominican parents, my initial understanding of the world was shaped by foods, languages, spiritualities and phenotypes. I was the kid who would eat foreign Middle Eastern lunches on class breaks, and who many times was mistakenly referred to as Turkish, to the chagrin of my Lebanese family. On the streets, walking with my dark-skinned Dominican father, people would shout to my progenitor the unkindest remarks about his ties with the white-looking boy he was traversing the city with. And at home, I would work on crafting a Vodun altar in my time off after Catholic school in the mornings. From birth, I could say I swam in a syncretism in which I felt completely at ease while yet navigating a convergence of perhaps the most contrasting currents. I would metaphorically swirl between streams of cold, warm, and even burning waters. This mingling adjusted some of the extreme aquatic temperatures that I encountered. I was mostly happy, and the clue was for me to get out of the waters when spasms would hit, when my skin wrinkled or when my lips turned purple *The Taínos, first inhabitants of the Island of Quisqueya/Haiti, are said to live now in a realm underneath the rivers, and sometimes can claim bathers into their domains*

In my early twenties I would forgo the plunges into the see-through Caribbean Sea and relocate to a perpetually cold and dark blue Atlantic Ocean in New York City. It was again in relationships where I continued to investigate identities. In Anglo-Saxon dominated “America” I was no longer the person I was raised to think I was. Abroad, the white-looking boy from the Island was deemed almost immediately a person of color. With this sudden shift arose alliances and partnerships with classmates who compassionately embraced me as one of them. I had never before heard of the acronym POC–until already part of a POC group who supported my path through graduate school. The majority Black and Brown country I arrived from, although riddled with racism, performed this in somewhat different ways than the USA. Back home we could seemingly sit wherever we wanted on the bus, and reality was that the lighter the skin, the more opportunities opened up. In New York City, I diligently partook of the education on social justice and activisms that the African American communities I would interact with while a student generously shared with me. Later along the road, I came to understand Dominicaness from the perspective of living with one foot in each place–for the time being: Manhattan and the Dominican Republic. Together in a circle of relations in Washington Heights and within the city at large, I became Dominican-York; a Dominican from New York City. On visits back to the Dominican Republic I would notice how the space I had left was no longer available–it has been occupied–, and with this, some of my previous identities had transformed, others made no sense anymore, or had simply crumbled. It was as if I could hear the tree fall and intuit the sound, but not hear it with my ears *Upon Mami’s death in Upper Manhattan, her personal altar to San Expedito was moved by her relatives to the hallway outside her apartment*

In the South Bronx the sound turns louder, even without any trees falling onto the pavement. This is because we do live in the most musical borough of our City, and perhaps our whole country. I would leave Manhattan 21 years ago to settle permanently on the US mainland. In the South Bronx I would cross paths with children, young adults, elders, activists, anarchists, nuns, the dying and neighbors, who would in turn guide me into my baptism as a Bronxite. This is the place where I have come of age and where I am slowly traveling into elderhood with many others. No one here inquires where I am from because it is obvious that this is where I am now and where those around me see me belong. I close my eyes then pause to notice the wholesome feeling of an arrival *At Raney Park in the South Bronx, deep-rooted trees become altars for those killed in our streets and families surround their imposing trunks with heartfelt offerings*