I met JB at the Brooklyn College weight room. He was practicing kinesthetic strengthening exercises in the tiny amount of free floor space bordered by weight machines and their self-conscious occupants. Oblivious to whether his calorie-counting peers were giving him odd looks, it was immediately obvious to me that JB has a kind of confidence and infectious optimism that is extremely hard to find. I asked if he could teach me his moves, and we've been friends ever since! JB moved from China to the Dominican Republic when he was five years old. After struggling to learn Spanish and find his way as a minority group in a sometimes unfriendly and dangerous environment, he moved again to New York when he was 18. Now he is majoring in education with a focus on mathematical education, which he hopes will lead to one day teaching mat at a college level.
My father was in DR working in a restaurant and he sent for my grandpa, grandma, uncles, aunts, and us. No body like it there. It's not about the climate difference, its just a different condition. I don't remember that much, because I was so little. I just remember hating it. It was so different. You don't speak the language, you don't know the people, and they look different. Probably you don't have friends. You just want to go back home. I speak Cantonese and Mandarin but it took me 2 years to learn Spanish. Also, the economic hardship, like food wise was hard to get used to. In China used to we have a policy that regulate people for having lot of meal and buying stuff. You need to have a ticket in order to purchase things. Even if you have money, you have to use tickets. When I was born in the 80s, change was happening. By the time when I moved to DR, it was already getting better, but we had decided already. We left because my dad had already done all the paper work. It's not because the DR was harder or easier. Life everywhere is hard.
I started to work when I was in 4th grade. I did different type of job. I learned to facilitate things, so I went shopping, buying things like art supplies on wholesale, and then I sold them at school. I sell anything that they want. Sometimes I loose money, sometimes I don't loose money. As a child you learn everything very quickly, very fast. I teach myself perfect Spanish in two years.
Now I have friends, but back then no. We didn't have telephone or television. The DR taught me to see how people really are. A lot of time, I learn things like people are nice and sometime people are evil. But most of the time, they don't mean what they are doing. They are forced by circumstance and economic hardship, because they probably have hungry child and they don't have job. When I got to DR, the economy was pretty stable, but the economic hardships became more apparent and then there was a lot of mob killing and robbing. A lot of dangerous things happening. My house was penetrated three times. People came in to steal stuff. The summer before 8th grade, I had to fight with two guys. I got cut, they have knifes. But I was with my sister. Once they got into the room with my sister, I stop fighting. Because I don't know what they gonna do with my sister, but I just froze. Someone passed around the house and they left, but they took money and stuff like that. I was very mad at first, but later on, I understand some things. A lot of time these people don't want to be bad.
Another problem is if you belong to a minority group in the DR a lot of people think you should not be here. A lot of times you hear kids playing game and they say things that might hurt you.
When I was 13, there was another armed assault at our house. My parents almost got killed. My mom got stabbed on her side. And my father too. They went to the hospital because my mom have fracture and have to have her hip replaced. My father was in intensive care for two weeks. I remember the day it happened because I tried to protect my sister. I locked them up. I don't know why I try to lock them in the room. It was a pretty dangerous way of living. So we decide to come to US.
When I got to New York, I speak a little English, but I didn't know how to read that well, neither speak. I spent two years learning on my own. Today, I do read better than speaking because when you learn by your own you don't speak that much. I got help from different people and learn to ask questions. In order to remember something, you have to think in that language, so most of the time when I want to learn something, I forgot everything in order to learn. Also you can't be afraid of making errors. I had a good teacher who encouraged a lot of reading and writing, even though she didn't like my complicated structure. We have lots of arguments. She told me “In order to be a good writer, you have to write simple. So make your sentences shorter, so gradually you can write how you want to.” I still have problems with verb agreement because the singular verb is with the “s” ending here, and the plural is without the “s”. In Spanish, it's the opposite way around.
If somebody asks me “where are you from?” I don't give them the whole story. Sometimes I tell them I'm from China, sometimes from DR or New York. Mostly I feel like telling them: “I'm a citizen of the world.”
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