Staff Writer – Kerran Monroe
Recently I went to the movies for the first in a while. Not sure what movie to watch, I let the actors in the movies choose for me. With that, I went with a movie starring Tatyana Ali (Ashley Banks from Fresh Prince). The name of the movie was Home Again and was about the struggles that Jamaicans face when they are deported from foreign countries back home.
The movie was centered on those deportees who left Jamaica at early ages like three and four years; in an attempt to get the audience to get the audience to change their negative perception of deportees and maybe even show some sympathy.
The three main characters; who of course, were deportees, arrived in Jamaica with no form of security in Jamaica. The only female of the group stayed with family in rural Jamaica. However she was sexually and otherwise abused and that caused her to run away to Kingston to stay with one of the male deportees whom she knew from back in the United States of America.
Photo courtesy www.bbc.co.uk
As for the two males, one got tired trying to find a place to stay and eventually started doing drugs and was living on the streets. The other one who knew the female got caught up in a life of crime.
My only quirks about this movie were that most of the “Jamaican” characters were not Jamaicans but in fact Trinidadians, trying to speak like Jamaicans and it made my ears burn each time I heard that strong Trini accent trying to sound Jamaican. However, that could be forgiven as this was because the Jamaican government resisted the movie and as a result it had to be shot in Trinidad instead.
All in all, though, the movie did not exactly change my perception about deportees; because it did not tell the whole story, it was not a bad watch. Have you seen this movie…? Do you understand the issue of Caribbean deportees causing problems for the countries of the region…?
