Bullying and Jealousy Made Me Into Someone I Didn’t Like
Names have been changed. Being bullied and losing a friend made me loud and obnoxious. By high school, when I realized what I had become, it was hard to change. It started in elementary school. In kindergarten I had a good friend, Sam, and we did everything together. But in 1st grade, we began learning […]
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Poverty Made Me Ashamed and Secretive
I was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica. Although we lived in an area that was considered a ghetto, our lives seemed luxurious to me. I thought our house was a castle, since it had three floors that towered over the one-story houses in the neighborhood. School was easy. The classes weren’t that challenging, but […]
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Living Two Lives
When I was in 8th grade, my family had to move from Brooklyn to live with a family friend in Jersey City because we could not afford the rent. It was me, my mother, and my 12-year-old brother. We were provided one small bedroom, a tight living area with a half kitchen, and a dingy […]
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Learning to Speak Up
Names have been changed. Surviving while Black in a predominantly non-Black school is an ongoing exercise in anticipating the consequences of your actions. From the time I started high school, I frequently heard racist and other offensive language, and I made constant calculations about whether or not to challenge it. During one period, I told […]
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