For nearly three decades, everyone called her Marie. Her job knew her as Marie. Her citizenship papers said Marie. The name followed her from Haiti to Boston to every floor she ever worked as a caregiver. There was just one problem: Marie was never her name.
On the latest episode of Fresh Leftovers — the world’s most dangerous Christian hip hop radio show — Legacy the Prince, Queen Lee, and DJ B4EY sit down with two guests whose story has been nine years in the making. One of them, Miss Erlin, has spent years caring around the clock for B4EY’s brother. The other, writer Shalisia Mason, is the woman who cracked the whole thing open with a single question in a kitchen: You ever wrote this stuff down?
What Erlin handed her wasn’t a stack of loose stories. It was a journal — one Erlin had been keeping since she was a little girl in Haiti, written in French, translated later into English, and locked in a safe. It was never meant to be read by anyone. Not her husband. Not her children. Not until she was gone.
Then Shalisia opened the cover and read a name she’d never heard before.
Inside this conversation, Erlin walks through how a whole generation of Haitian immigrants ended up sharing the exact same first name, why a 10-year-old’s silence at a Mother’s Day play changed everything, and what it took to finally stand in front of a judge and reclaim what was always hers. There’s a mother who crossed an ocean on a green card the moment it arrived, a below-zero Boston snowstorm, a boy with braces and a big smile — and a love story the hosts admit they cannot fully tell on air.
This is a testimony about identity, God’s timing, and the difference between being provided for and being truly seen. As Shalisia puts it, Marie didn’t live any of this. Erlin did.
The book, I Am Erlin, is available now for pre-order, with the full launch and book signing set for July 18 at the Marlow Center in Georgia — and it’s available through Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Fair warning from the guests themselves: this one is not a children’s book.
Press play, hear the testimony live and direct, and find out who Erlin really is.
Listen to the full episode of Fresh Leftovers now.