Noel grew up in Washington Heights in New York City. He left home to go to college and returned after graduating to teach. Now going for a master's degree, Noel talks about growing up in a community that can be very difficult to leave.
Description: It's beautiful and poisonous. The culture is very diverse and rich in the arts, music, food and everything else, but there's a kind of... element that will not let you grow if you stay there too long.
Positive: I taught for the Dominican Alliance, a summer youth program for teens and young adults. We train students before they go to work.
I was able to come back to my hometown and share with them the experience of getting out, what the world looks like outside of the hood. I also taught them about basic sexual health which, for people their age, they had very limited knowledge of.
Negative: I went to a private school in the South Bronx. It was a really great school, but in a shitty neighborhood. When I went to school every day in high school, I was always worrying about which colors I had on and if it would be viewed as disrespectful toward a particular gang. If you wore the wrong color...
This went on all throughout high school. Depending on if you wore gold, red, or blue there was a possibility of people assaulting you. If you weren't in a gang and you wore those colors, you could get attacked.
People were getting their faces cut open a lot during that period. There's a population in Washington Heights that, if you look at them, they have a big cut across their face which means a gang got to them.
Advice to living there: Thoroughly research what part of Washington Heights you're going to live in. the good parts are really good and really expensive. The Hudson River is right there. If the rent's too cheap, you probably don't want to live there.
Smell: Smells like summer heat.
If you could change one thing: The attitude of the children toward education. It doesn't exist. Even in the private schools where I taught, children didn't take education seriously.
It's a vicious cycle: they don't learn, they drop out, they hang out with the people that are causing trouble, and then they become the people that are causing trouble.
There's a really low expectation of what you're going to do if you're a teenager in Washington Heights.
If you could keep one thing keep same: The arts, the music, the food, the culture. Un-Americanized culture. Because it's what makes it different.
Bottom line: It should be better.
Liz,
ReplyDeleteVery interesting post, as always. Love learning about all these different people and where they come from/how they view the neighborhood in which they grew up. This post seemed a lot shorter and less detailed than your past posts. It was a very quick read, but maybe the kid you interviewed didn't give much detail, lending to a much shorter blog. No biggie though, it was still interesting. I can't ever imagine growing up not knowing if I was going to get jumped or cut up. Must have been scary.
Chris Daniels
Liz,
ReplyDelete"It's beautiful and poisonous"...I loved that line! What a perfect way to describe something. Noel wanted out, but there is something that keeps you there. I can't imagine what it would be like to have to be so conscious of what color you were wearing to school! I don't wear a lot of gold, but I do wear a lot of blue and to be in fear of being jumped all the time would be horrible!
I really liked this post, it was very interesting! I love learning about these different people each week!
-Tori
You really captured what it's like to live in a world that not a lot of people know a lot about. I loved the beautiful and poisonous line, really summed up the parallels that make up this neighborhood.
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