Growing Up Puerto Rican in an Irish Neighborhood
Sadly, I never had a deep connection to my heritage. I am a third-generation Puerto Rican, born and raised in New York and my parents grew up in the Bronx. In general, the Bronx has a heavy Hispanic influence depending on the area that you go to and they are certainly not shy about their culture, which of course is a beautiful, admirable thing. My parents moved out of their rough neighborhoods and in my mother's words, “I left the ‘hood for a reason, and no way in hell am I going back!” Can’t say I blame her and because of this, I grew up somewhere in the middle.
My Catholic middle school was riddled with — for lack of a better word — white kids. Of course, as a child, you don’t understand the concept of race, prejudice, and the like but, even that young, I always felt different. I started to notice that no one around me looked like me; we had sprinkles of fellow kids with darker features like mine but most times, they eventually left the schools for reasons my child mind couldn’t understand. One day, they would just no longer be there or didn’t show up for the following year. Did they move? Some did. Or maybe their parents also noticed the pattern here and decided to send their kids elsewhere.
0 Comments