Proud Jamaicans and Indians celebrate Kamala Harris's VP nomination
Kamala Harris's history-making nomination as the first woman of colour to join a major-party presidential ticket in the US was being celebrated in both her father’s native Jamaica and her mother’s hometown of Chennai, India.
Ms Harris, 55, who was announced on Wednesday as Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s running mate, may have grown up in the Bay Area of California but proud locals in both countries have claimed her as their own.
"My heart is soaring for all the kids out there who see themselves in her and will dream bigger because of this," said Felicia Mills, a 36-year-old executive secretary from Kingston, Jamaica.
"This means a lot for every little girl who has ever dreamed an impossible dream," told Agence French Press, describing Harris as an "honourary Jamaican".
Ms Harris - whose first name means “lotus” in Sanskrit - was the first black attorney general of California and the first woman to hold that post, while she was also the first woman of South Asian heritage elected to the US Senate.
Her father, Donald Harris, is a naturalised US citizen who served as an economics professor at prestigious Stanford University in California, where he taught and carried out research. He also served as a consultant to Jamaica's government and its prime ministers.
Her father and mother, breast cancer researcher Shyamala Gopalan, separated when Ms Harris was five years old and she and her sister Maya were raised by her mother, who died in 2009.
Ms Gopalan had moved to the US at the age of 19 to pursue a doctoral degree at the University of California at Berkeley.
Ms Harris’s aunt, Sarala Gopalan, a retired physician in the South Indian city of Chennai, told an Indian television channel after the announcement that the entire family was "thrilled" by the news.
“If I send her a message right now saying, ‘Kamala, I need you,’ the next day she will be there,” Ms Gopalan said.
A headline in The Times of India, one of the world's most widely read English-language newspapers, read, "'A daughter of Chennai, Kamala blooms in US."
