My family is Jamaican and Cuban, but we would go to see our Jamaican side every summer for three months and every Christmas. One of the things I used to love was climbing trees and picking ackee fruit for breakfast.

Back in those early days when I began my apprenticeship as a poet, I also tried to voice our anger, spirit of defiance and resistance in a Jamaican poetic idiom.

The fact that 'Small Island' is 'period' is amazing for me because it's something that I've never been involved with before. Also, half my family is Jamaican and this story is essentially a story about Jamaican people, and it's portraying a part of history that I was not that familiar with myself.

My mum was the most wonderful cook and our house was always full of delicious food and interesting people. I remember dad entertaining the likes of Des O'Connor and Bruce Forsyth. But what really shaped my childhood were the amazing Jamaican dishes that mum produced so effortlessly.

Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I'm Jamaican or I'm Ghanaian. America doesn't care.

I would like to work with anyone in the business who wants to give respect back to the Jamaican vibe.

There's a glorious sense of freedom in comedy just allowing myself to tell jokes allowing myself to interrupt myself and tell old African folk stories that I made up - or didn't - and Jamaican stories.

We lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Northwest D.C. I was essentially raised by a Panamanian man and a Jamaican woman. That's why I have such a fascination with Jamaican food.