“So, here you are
too foreign for home
too foreign for here.
Never enough for both.”
― Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada

“Baba, tell me about home…”

A child makes this statement on a dark screen before Black Panther's opening sequence, an explanation of how the most advanced civilization in the Marvel universe came to be. During your first viewing of of the film, you probably thought the voice was a young T’Challa asking his father about home, as I did. After all, you've waited years for this representation, and months since the trailers started coming out, so there you were finally watching a film about the first black superhero in comics with a majority black cast. You were excited for the storytelling that was about to unfold. However, it is after you watched the movie and come back a second time that you realize the child isn’t T’Challa, the hero and king in the movie, but a young Erik Stevens, who would become the villain, Killmonger. As he attempts to seize power in Wakanda from T’Challa, Erik points out frequently that the king does not know what it feels like to be an outsider. Even Ulysses Klaue, right before he is killed, warns Killmonger that to Wakandans, Erik (whose Wakandan name is N'jadaka) will always be an outsider.

Young Erik’s question to his father touches on the yearning to know about a place that is both a part of him and yet, distant. As the film progressed and Erik aired his grievances with Wakanda turning its back on black people around the world, I nodded my head in affirmation. The question of where Wakanda was while Africans were sold into slavery and the continent colonized, does make it hard to stomach the moral grandstanding and aloof nature of the Wakandan leadership. It also allows many of the disposed members of the diaspora to identify with his anger. While his speech highlighted key points of contention between black populations, I could empathize with the personal hurt of a child whose father was killed by his uncle, and the feeling of being left in a land with a limited understanding of his identity.

Upon my second viewing, I realized that I empathized with Erik so deeply because I saw myself in him; I saw a boy struggling to find his place in a world where two of his identities clashed with one another. Erik was both African American, because of his mother (a woman we never meet nor learn much about), and Wakandan, through his father. His struggle throughout the film mirrors the experience of many first generation black immigrants who may have been born elsewhere and live somewhere else, but never truly feel a part of either place.

For me, being a first generation black immigrant in the US was to be in a constant state of foreignness. I was born in Jamaica, but never raised there. When my parents were able to emigrate to the United States, they did not pass up the chance to provide their children with better opportunities that they felt were available in the United States (opportunities only available due to the history of slavery, genocide, imperialism, etc.). Growing up, although I had a green card that marked me as “alien” in the US, you would never know unless you came home and had dinner with me. I sounded American in school and understood enough cultural cues to not seem too different from my peers. But my home life was undeniably Jamaican, complete with jerk chicken, stew peas, rice with every meal and my parents’ patois cutting through the air. However, no matter how much a part I felt in both these communities, there was a part of me that often felt disconnected or missing. Like a young Erik, I would ask my parents to tell me about growing up in Jamaica, as if through their stories I would somehow become more Jamaican than I seemed.

On the other hand, growing up in a predominantly black school district, I learned that while I was black, my experience differed from my peers who I constantly wanted to like me. I didn’t know much about soul food and African American culture because outside from school, I was surrounded mainly by Jamaicans at home and church. Every year after returning from summer vacation, I listened as my African American friends recounted trips to visit family in the south and silently envied them for not being able to connect with my roots in such a way. When I did go to visit family in Jamaica — which wasn’t too often because of the cost and the fact that we were green card holders — I tried hard not to seem like the American cousin. In my mind, I was born in Jamaica, ate Jamaican food and went to a Jamaican church, so what made me so different than them? I would attempt to outperform my cousins by corralling the goats into their pen for the evening, and when a cousin once mentioned a band-aid I put over a cut that they deemed small, I quickly took it off, as to prove my “Jamaican” toughness. Yet, none of this mattered, as after two weeks I returned to New Jersey no more confident in my standing with my African American peers or my Jamaican relatives and community members.

When new students came and they said they were from Jamaica, I tried to be close friends with them. Yet, there were also times when the same people I tried to be friends with, due to our shared Jamaican ancestry, would question my “Jamaicaness,” which highlighted how different I still was. Also, whenever I wasn’t stereotypically Jamaican to non-Jamaicans, I was immediately discounted as being Jamaican. While we only see Erik for a brief time, but Michael B. Jordan’s portrayal allows us a glimpse into a man hardened by essentially being stateless.

In many ways Killmonger is a compelling villain not because he has the same “take over the world” plan, but specifically because deep down he is just a boy struggling to find out his place in the world. In the emotional scene where Erik travels to the spirit world where he meets his long dead father, the character who had just beaten T’Challa and taken control of Wakanda shed his intimidating façade and reverted to the young boy who not only lost his father, but also a connection to a crucial part of his dual identity. Watching Erik aggressively seek out revenge against the Wakandans that killed his father and abandoned him touched the part of me that, at times, still feels as if I’m lost between two worlds — effectively stateless no matter how hard I try. Indeed, during their final battle, T’Challa’s comment about how Erik had become the people he hated speaks to the complex identities first generation black immigrants sometimes adopt in order to survive and be accepted by the mainstream society. He survived by remaking himself and becoming thoroughly “American,” becoming a member of a special ops unit for the US and advancing its militaristic interests, helping to destabilize governments. Yet, a part of Erik still longed to see the romanticized version of Wakanda that his father told him about.

Erik’s last line, before he removed his spear from his chest, reflects the tragedy of not only his character, but also how first generation black immigrants are often forced into choosing one side over the other in order to be accepted. One could argue that his final line to T’Challa, “Bury me in the ocean where my ancestors jumped from the ships, because they knew death was better than bondage,” was him renouncing his ties to Wakanda, which for the majority of his life had only brought him anger, pain and a desire for revenge, that eventually consumed him.

While I understand the angst of wanting to belong somewhere and not be seen as an outsider, I’m beginning to learn that I don’t have to be like Erik and deny a part of myself because I don’t fit someone else’s checklist of who they think I should be. What makes me powerful is having these two identities wrapped in this black skin. Yes, they clash and, yes, others will always view me as one or the other, but, at least to me, I am neither half one or the other, but a whole person that can see both sides.

Khemani Gibson

Writing since September 2016 · 2 stories contributed