Gillian Rougier is an immigrant from Trinidad. She came to Brooklyn with her family when she was in high school, leaving a very safe and comfortable lifestyle behind. She is studying theater and is now in her last year of college.
"I'm from Trinidad. I've lived in the US since June of 2001, so 8 years now, which is unbelievable! I have my mom and my two sisters and my grandma here. My grandmother lived here before we did. I am a student at Brooklyn College getting my BFA in acting, which takes up most of my time, but I also work as an usher at a theater called 59 E 59. When I'm not working I'm doing school work, which is a big part of my life, or I'm at rehearsals for whatever play I'm doing.
It's a funny story how I came to the U.S. We [my sisters and I] were actually tricked into it, and I was really mad at first. My parents brought us to New York and said that we were going here for a summer trip, but then my dad left at the end of the summer and told us that we were going to stay here with my mom. It was funny because all of my friends were saying as a joke "You better come back, don't go there and end up staying!" and I was like "No, no" and then that's what I did. But yeah, they tricked us. My family is like that. They are always so secretive about stuff. My dad said he couldn't stay because he had a good job and was too close to retirement to start over again--which is funny because that's what my mom had to do. But I guess they thought it would be better for us because Trinidad is really limited in a lot of ways. Like....it's really education oriented and if you don't have like the top grades and the top test scores it's hard to get a good job. And there aren't a lot of creative things to do for me. I was really angry at first but now I'm so glad because I'm doing everything I want. I want to be an actor and I could never even think of doing that there. I don't even know what I'd be doing there. I think it's been really hard for my mom. She made a huge sacrifice. In Trinidad we had a house, it was paid off, my mom worked at a post office and got home at three and could spend time with us. But here, we live in an apartment and she's always worried about paying rent. She misses having a house. She works so hard and doesn't have her nice house and benefits like she did in Trinidad.
When I came here it was really unlike I expected. I remember driving from JFK to my grandma's apartment in Brooklyn and I remember the smell, this gross smell, and it's funny because I'm used to it now. And the trash on the sidewalk and streets too. When you think of America it's like milk and honey, everything is fun and easy, and it's definitely not like that. My transition to high school was very tough. I was in my last year of high school and I was coming from an all girl's school in Trinidad to a zone school in Brooklyn in a bad neighborhood. I had to learn about gangs for the first time, and the educational system is very different. I connected with a lot of other Trinidadians and Caribbeans because it made me feel safe. That's what you have to do. I live in Crown Heights, and when we moved here I would say "hi, good afternoon, good night" to EVERYONE and they would look at me like I was crazy or just completely ignore me or something. I learned really fast that that's not what people do here. I also was around Orthodox Jews for the first time, and a lot of them have problems with blacks. You feel like something is wrong with you because of the way some of them just ignore you. But I realize it's just different people, different relationships.
I came out here with my Trinidadian dialect and it was a hard transition. It made me really self conscience. You get tired of people asking you where you're from and it just starts these long conversations and explanations that you don't want to get into. My sister and I say that now we speak somewhere in between a Trinidadian and American dialect at home. When I go back there it gets thicker though. But I have a really good American dialect now, my acting speech classes helped with that. I'm glad I can do both dialects because they help me in different ways. Like, it's good to go to an audition or job interview with an American dialect because you aren't just looked at as like this islander or something, but it's also good to have the Trinidadian because it keeps me connected to my culture.
My life has changed since I moved here because in Trinidad it was really conservative and I have so much more freedom here. It's really helped me find my inner strenth, and I'm getting to pursue acting, which is my dream, and that's amazing. It's funny because in a lot of ways I'm living that typical "follow the American Dream" story.
I became a US citizen last year when Bush was the President. You get like this welcome packet thing from President Bush and I sort of wish I had become a citizen and gotten that from Obama, but then I got to vote for Obama which I guess was a better trade off. It's funny, Mack [my boyfriend] thought I was an illegal immigrant for a while. We were with one of my sisters and she made some joke about me being here illegally or something, and he got kinda quiet and didn't laugh or anything. And then his dad asked me another time, not like straight out, but he asked me in this indirect way if I was here legally or not, and I was like "Of course I'm here legally! I have a job and I go to school!" It was funny. Mack was too scared to ask me because he thought it was a touchy subject or something. I guess his dad thought I was trying to marry his son so I could stay in the country.
The question do I think of myself as an American is really hard! Yes and no? Yes because I live here and I'm doing things that I could only do here, but there are some things in American culture that I just don't like to associate with. It's hard to say I'm American because it makes me feel like I'm forgetting my Trinidadian culture, and I don't want that. But I am much more an American in a lot of ways because of my life now. I don't know....that a hard question.
I think my immigration experience is a fairly common one. I came here with my family looking for something we couldn't get in our home country. Not to belittle my experience, I think it's unique because it's my story, but I think it's the more common one. We weren't running away from a bad government or something, that's not why we came here.
My connections to my culture.... the food! Not the music as much. I go back each summer, and I usually participate in the West Indian Labor Day Parade--we call it "Carnival" in February on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, except last year I didn't... I speak my dialect at home with my family. I don't talk to my friends and family there that much. But I do see them in the summer.
I hope in the future my mother will get her house. She's in school at Kingsborough and wants to teach, so I really hope that works out for her. My goal for myself is to finish school this Spring, and audition and live my dream."
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