Barack H. Obama elected 44th president of the United States of America

I can't fully describe the emotion.

America has elected Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of the United States of America.

Four-hundred years after black Africans arrived on the shores of North America confined to the chains of slavery, Obama, the biracial son of a Kenyan father and white American mother, and his wife, the great-granddaughter of slaves, will enter the White House as America's first family.

America has been my homes since I arrived here from the Bahamas when I was a year old. My parents, both Haitian immigrants from meager backgrounds, taught me that almost everything in this country was attainable. I could be a doctor, a lawyer. I could write books if I chose. But be president? "They won't ever let that happen," is how my parents explained it.

Tonight, my mother cheered in jubilation.

My sister cried, completely overcome.

For me, the words are difficult to come by, trapped somewhere between disbelief that this has happened and utter elation.

My hands are still a bit unsteady, my skin prickled all over.

I think Eugene Robinson explained it best today in his column in the Washington Post: Obama's success on the national scale gives me a "new kind of pride" in my adopted country.