I’ve always had a complicated relationship with the sound of my voice. It started well before the first time I heard myself on tape — though the moment after I pressed play on that prehistoric tape recorder was one of the most ear-opening moments of my life.
“Is that what everyone hears when I talk,” I thought to myself as I tried to wrap my brain around the strange sound coming out of the speakers. I heard something completely different in my own head, and it sounded so much more “normal” than this.
It was the first time I realized the Caribbean accent all the kids in school made fun of wasn’t just a figment of their imagination. Suddenly, it all made sense: the taunts, the looks, the “Are you from Jamaica?” inquiries, and why so many of my Black classmates bullied me for not talking like them.
It happened a little bit after I stopped taking speech classes in third or fourth grade. Speech class had been a humiliating experience. Mrs. Upson was the teacher, and I had to go twice a week while everyone else was in regular class. There were only two or three other people in speech class, so every time I went, I felt like I was being singled out for being some kind of a freak. What was wrong with the way I talked? It sounded perfectly normal in my own head.
But reluctantly, I went. I didn’t have a choice. Although at the time, I thought it was a punishment for being a trespasser in the Sunshine State from the U.S. Virgin Islands, I now realize their intentions were mostly educational and not just about stifling my individuality. I had a lisp, and I pronounced the “th” sound like the “t” sound. For example, the number “three” sounded like “tree” coming out of my mouth.
I also had a very severe stutter. It was so bad that up until second grade, I never said a word in school unless I absolutely had to. I remember the time Mrs. Krapf, my first-grade teacher, asked me to get one of my classmates on the playground. I was so petrified of making a fool of myself that when I ran out to where the boy was, instead of telling him Mrs. Krapf wanted to see him, I just pointed at her dramatically.
It took him a while to get the, er, point, but eventually he did. I was safe for the moment. But those moments of safety didn’t last long. Although I was a good student, I spent much my elementary school days in a perpetual state of dread. What if the teacher called on me to read out loud, and I wasn’t able to get the words out?
Speech class forced me to talk. But somehow, my stutter wasn’t as much of an issue there. Maybe it was because it was a controlled environment, and there were fewer eyes and ears on me when I opened my mouth.
In hindsight, it was still pretty dreadful. But I’ve never understood why my classmates didn’t make fun of me for my speech impediments. And I can’t recall a single time that anyone acknowledged my stutter. Thankfully, by the time I graduated from fifth grade to middle school, I’d worked out the lisp and I’d mastered the “th” sound.
The taunts from my classmates became less about my accent (which I suppose most of them had gotten used to) and more about my effete manner of speaking. By then, that dreaded tape recorder had already given me a dose of reality — and what a horrible sound it was.
It would take decades for me to come to terms with that sound. As a journalist who has done a lot of television, radio and podcast appearances, and on-air interviews, I’ve had to buckle up and deal with it.
Eventually, I learned to accept and appreciate, if not quite love, my voice. The stutter remains, though it’s not as intense as it was when I was a kid, and I’ve come up with ways to work around it. I try to speak slowly, and I carefully plan what I’m going to say before I say it to avoid potentially problematic words. But I still panic a little on the inside every time I do live TV.
Certain letters are scarier than others. A, for instance, can be absolutely terrifying, especially when it comes at the beginning of a name. If I have to begin a sentence with “Angelina Jolie,” my palms sweat, and my heart races. Even my own name can be hit and miss.
I’ve stumbled a few times on live TV, but I’ve generally managed to keep my stutter at bay. As for my accent, times have changed. It’s interesting how some of the things that made me the butt of ridicule as a kid — my accent, my big lips — are the things people compliment me for today.
I’ve even started to embrace my own voice — the one other people hear. What I hear in my head and what people hear when they’re listening to me are still two entirely different things, but there’s nothing I can do about it. As long as I don’t mangle “Angelina Jolie” on live TV, I’m good.
And then last week, my voice made it to Reddit, and all the trauma of my youth came back to me. Here’s what it said:
Shockingly, my heart didn’t drop. I didn’t get angry. I didn’t even feel insulted. The appearance this person was talking about was a People magazine true-crime documentary that premiered in September 2023 on Discovery’s ID network. I had actually received a lot of praise from my colleagues about that appearance, and although I had my issues with how I came across (as I usually do), I was pretty happy with it.
Instead of feeling crushed and insulted when I read the Reddit takedown, I laughed. If anything, I felt a little stung for people who are partially deaf. My hearing isn’t what it used to be, but I’m not partially deaf. If I were, though, should that disqualify me from speaking in public? And is it really that difficult to understand someone who is partially deaf, like Halle Berry?
When I read the Reddit to my husband, who is Australian, he reminded me that people in the U.S. — especially, ironically, in New York City, where every other person you meet has an accent — struggle to understand him all the time. It’s resulted in quite a few fucked-up take-out orders in the five and a half years that we’ve been back in the U.S.
He instinctively tried to comfort me, but I actually didn’t need him to. If I had read a comment like that 20 years ago, it would have broken me for at least a few hours. But living abroad for 13 years in countries where I didn’t speak the language or had to learn the language, in countries where U.S. accents aren’t the norm and are frequently belittled (I once went on a Grindr date in Sydney with a guy who complimented me for not talking “like an American”), taught me to embrace my own voice.
There’s always someone who is going to think you sound “strange” or can’t understand you — even if you never step foot outside of your country, or your state, or your hometown. I’ve managed to evolve from a little boy who stuttered, went to speech class twice a week, and was terrified to talk in school to a journalist who regularly faces his voice fears publicly — and is visible enough to get slammed on Reddit.
I’ll take that as a compliment.