Because I Spoke Up

I always felt different. I was tall for my age, taller than most of my classmates, and my voice was higher than the other boys’. I also had a speech impediment, which made my words feel like obstacles instead of tools. 

My mom had me repeat myself, asking me to slow down. “Try again Yeshaya, there is no need to rush,” she’d say.  My mom was the only one who made me repeat myself until my pronunciation was understandable. I cried with frustration whenever she did. 

The way she describes it, I sounded like a Minion, talking gibberish that no one understood. My older brother Zacharias took advantage of that by “translating” for me. For instance, my mom would ask Zacharias if I wanted a snack. He would pretend to listen to me and say, “Yup, he wants ice cream.”

I started speech therapy in kindergarten, where I learned to slow down and articulate better, but I still felt self-conscious about the way I spoke. I hid my voice to avoid people telling me they couldn’t understand me. During lunch, I’d sit alone outside instead of playing with the other kids.

Even in my family, I continued to keep things to myself rather than speaking them out loud. In the second semester of 5th grade, my parents split up and my dad moved to North Carolina. We four boys stayed with him there and missed a whole month of school. I felt upset and angry but didn’t talk about that. 

Since then, my brothers and I have mostly lived with my mom in the Bronx and spent summers with my dad in North Carolina. When we’re at home with our mom, I have to call my dad every day: It’s in their divorce agreement. If we don’t, my dad complains to us, “I’m supposed to speak to my sons every day.” 

Though I try to see his perspective, it’s difficult because he doesn’t understand that I’m busy with a lot of activities. My dad would speak badly about my mom to us, which makes me uncomfortable. My mom tries to refrain from that, but she’s angry at him too.  

After the divorce, Zacharias took on a “Man of the House” attitude and distanced himself from our father. He helped my mom with shopping and errands, though he also got in trouble in school. I’m the second oldest and I tried to be the role model for my younger brothers. I wanted to show them that being dedicated to school would pay off and that we could get along with both parents. 

Zacharias is two grades ahead of me, and he’s confident and outgoing. Throughout elementary school, he’d make connections as though he belonged. Meanwhile, I was not invited to my peers’ parties. 

Zacharias often got in trouble at our elementary school in Astoria, Queens. I felt like I was in his shadow, even though some teachers and staff could see that I was more of a good kid, a people-pleaser. 

I wanted to start anew and make a name for myself. So I started 6th grade at Nest+m, a STEM-focused K-12 public school. It was a big decision for me to go to a different middle school than Zacharias.

That March was the Covid lockdown. After we returned to classrooms, school was still lonely and disappointing. I was often alone in the cafeteria watching TV on my iPad as I felt the time rush past me. Though I saw classmates I wanted to know, my doubt kept holding me back from reaching out to them. All the way up into 8th grade, I stayed quiet.  

During one 8th grade ELA class we had to quickly answer discussion questions about a book, and then share with our small group. I scrambled to write my answer before the timer went off, and I succeeded. But when it was my turn, I imagined the room focused on me and I couldn’t get the words out. Instead, I held my notebook so others could read what I’d written. I regretted not speaking; the book was about a person of color, and there weren’t many of us in my class. I felt like my spoken voice could have conveyed more of how I felt about it. This happened over and over at school. 

Speaking in Character

Ironically, though I’d wanted to be away from Zacharias, I ended up finding my voice in a program that he was in too: Creating Arts Team (CAT) youth theatre. At CAT, students create plays together through improv, then work on the scenes for a few months before performing the show for an audience. Everybody is in the initial improv scenes, but not everybody performs onstage.

In 8th grade, I went with my mom to pick up Zacharias there. He had been doing the program for two years, working in the sound booth. One of the assistant directors introduced himself to us and said, “Zach is taking risks into the unknown and fully engaging in the session.” 

I peeked into the theater room, and it was full of energy. Everyone participating raised their hand to share their thoughts about their work and smiled a lot. 

My mom told me later about CAT’s junior youth program for 8th graders. She encouraged me, “Yeshaya, this could be the first step of getting out of your comfort zone. You can find your voice.” 

Even though I had liked the atmosphere of the theater and saw what my mom was getting at, I was hesitant and overwhelmed about being in an unfamiliar setting. But a year later, in September of my freshman year, I got my nerve up and joined CAT. 

Speech therapy had given me a foundation for talking in groups, and I was ready to build on that. My voice wasn’t high anymore; other kids had grown taller so I didn’t stand out as much. And I was tired of regretting that I hadn’t spoken up. 

On my first day of the CAT program, I reminded myself that I was here to get out of my comfort zone. One thing that helped was an icebreaker improv game where each student made a statement about themselves and walked across the room. If the statement also applied to you, you crossed the room behind the speaker.  

I felt like our thoughts and fears about the future intertwined because I spoke up.  

I was hesitant to participate, but I looked around and realized we were all taking risks and putting ourselves out there for our own reasons. I knew mine was to find my voice. My heart was beating fast and my hands were sweating. I spoke up. 

“Cross if you like listening to gospel music,” I said to a room of kids who mostly liked rap music. When a few others crossed the floor with me, I felt like I’d found a space to be myself.

When I joined, Zacharias was not excited. I felt in his shadow sometimes, but he wanted his own space too. Plus my parents would say to him, “Why can’t you be more like Yeshaya?” Which made it harder for both of us. 

In the end, though, we were able to keep out of each other’s way at CAT. It helped that Zacharias did sound in the tech booth, while I was onstage. Acting was the best job in theater for what I wanted to achieve. I had to commit to fully inhabiting my character: Make my voice loud. It’s not easy for me to project, but as a character, I had to do it. 

My first big performance was in February of my 9th grade year, in a play called Between the Lines. I played one of the kids in a family scene, with two kids and a mom and a dad who were already divorced. Throughout the scene, people talked over each other. 

I gave a short monologue about how it feels being caught between parents who disagree. I said  in character, “We are always stuck in the middle,” expressing something I’d been feeling since the 5th grade. 

Then I asked my onstage parents, “Which way first?” In unison, my mom said “go left” and my dad said “go straight.” I put my hands over my ears to represent a kid shutting down. 

My dad drove up from North Carolina for the play; he came on a different night than my mom. I felt like my parents saw my real thoughts about their divorce and conflicts. I’d never been able to tell them how upsetting it was when they spoke badly about each other to me. Zacharias didn’t say anything about the content of the scene, but he did say, “You killed it.”

My time at CAT helped me face things that I thought were impossible. Finding the courage to perform and let the audience know how I felt was magical. In my role, I expressed emotions that I’d been suppressing and opened my eyes to the truth that I was denying.  

The truth was that for years, I had been beating around the bush to protect others’ feelings, while sacrificing my own. At CAT I learned to say the unsaid.

Speaking as Myself

I didn’t stop at theater. In 9th grade, I signed up for SEO Scholars, a college readiness program for public high school students with good grades. For their podcast I wrote scripts and performed and helped record trailers. 

Then I became an ambassador for both SEO Scholars and my school. As a school ambassador, I tell prospective parents and students about what the school offers. I tell them the basics and then interact with them one-on-one. Last year, I talked with a Black 8th grader. I shared with him that I had joined the school’s Black Student Union and found a community there. It feels great to help someone else by sharing my struggles.

This year in 11th grade, I’m doing a youth art program at the New Museum, NewMu Teen, where we look at different artists’ pieces and talk about how they make us feel. We’re invited to be vulnerable there, and there isn’t a wrong answer because art means different things to different people. 

We took a field trip to the International Center of Photography, where I zeroed in on a photograph of a manhole with steam coming out of it. I pointed out that the photo being black and white helped us see pollution more clearly. Someone else said humans are making the environment worse, and others chimed in. Before, I would have just listened to others talk and beat myself up later. This time I felt like our thoughts and fears about the future intertwined because I spoke up.  

Most recently, I’m in a group that’s planning a citywide event later this spring where teens from art programs all over the city come together. The goal is to build community among teen artists. I suggested we start with some of the icebreakers we learned at CAT Theater. 

I’ve never helped plan an event before. With each new thing I do, I feel more confident. 

My mom often brings up my progress to others. She’ll say, with a smile,  “Would you believe it? When he was young he used to hide behind me.” I smile too because I remember how that felt, and I’m proud of pushing myself to grow into the person I am today. While I still find joy in making my mom happy, I also need to express what I feel and what I want separate from that. 

Growth doesn’t mean becoming someone completely different. It just means becoming a more open, more confident version of who I already was. I didn’t stop being me; I just stopped hiding.