HeyJaredStory Letters from Samaná
Story Letters from Samaná is a serialized literary companion to Samaná: Seven Generations (Livingston Press), tracing a real Black American lineage while documenting the living process of carrying history into publication.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 9
- Latest publication
- Sep 26, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 13, 2026
Latest issues
When Identity Meets the Gaze (opens the original)
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I keep seeing a version of the same response whenever I say Dominicans are Black. Someone will say, “So you’re disrespecting people by calling them what you want instead of what they want?”I understand why that sounds reasonable at first.If someone tells you how they identify, that matters. I’m not interested in being rude just to prove a point. I’m not walking around trying to rename people against their will like I work at the identity DMV.But that comment is confusing two different things. Id
More Than a Mixture (opens the original)
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I keep getting the same argument in different outfits.“Not all Dominicans are Black.”“Dominicans are mixed.”“Dominicans are mestizo.”“We have Native, Spanish, and African ancestry.”“Look at the percentages.”“Black is just a color.”And every time it shows up, I can feel the same mistake underneath it.I say race.They answer with grandparents.<a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!iZx
Six Months on the Sixth Floor (opens the original)
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I’ve been in this apartment for six months now, which feels impossible because I still remember moving in on March 1st and thinking I was just changing apartments.That’s what it felt like at the time.A new place. A new view. A new version of Miami to settle into. Sixth floor, balcony, more light, a different rhythm from the old apartment. I figured the apartment would slowly come together. Furniture, routine, writing, life, all of it.And technically, it is coming together.I have balcony furnitur
A Remix Is Not Treason (opens the original)
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A Dominican artist made a song with a Haitian artist, and some people reacted like music had crossed the border without papers.That’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.Not because every Dominican has to like the song, not because every collaboration needs to become a political symbol, and not because music fixes history.But because the reaction said more than the remix ever could.Bulin 47 collaborated with Haitian artist Afriken An on the remix of “Leo Leo,” connected to the viral phrase “Yo
Black Is Not Just a Color (opens the original)
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I keep getting the same kind of comment.“Black is just a color.”“Race isn’t real.”“Why do you care so much?”“Why are you making everything about race?”Sometimes it comes dressed up as social construction. Sometimes it comes through the crayon argument. Sometimes it shows up as, “Dominicans are Caribbean,” as if Caribbean history floated across the ocean untouched by Africa, slavery, colonization, race, color, class, migration, and Haiti.The words change, but the move is familiar.Take Blackness,
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