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Interview Transcript:

Interviewee: Amanda Brito and Daniela BritoInterviewer: Alexandra HallDate: 4/23/2011Location: Vanderbilt UniversityTime: 6:15PM

Background InformationInterviewer: Where were you born?

Amanda: We were both were born in Manhattan, NY.

Interviewer: Can you begin by telling me your age and your respective schools?

Amanda: I’m 18, and I go to Vanderbilt.

Daniella: I’m 16, and I go to Baruch College Campus High School. Interviewer: What are some of your favorite memories from your childhood? Did you grow up there?

Amanda: One of my fondest memories was when we had a family reunion in the Dominican Republic. And initially I just thought my family was my Mom, her siblings, my Dad and his siblings or whatever, but my father didn’t… my father’s side of the family is small, he just has two brothers. But my mother has like six brothers and sisters, and they all have children, more than one. So, I just thought, even though that was a large extended family, I just thought that was my family. You know? But when we got to the Dominican Republic, it was like one of my first times, I think that I was cautious of what the country was. My grandparents still live there, my Mother’s parents still live there, and so staying in their house was just so different. And driving, like sitting in the back of cars, because my grandfather had a pickup truck, and everywhere we went, he would drive in the front and all the kids would get in the back of the pickup truck, and we would just drive around the town. And we were driving to the reunion, and we were in the back of the pickup truck, and it was raining so we had a blue plastic, sitting in the back, covering ourselves so we wouldn’t get wet, but when we got there, it was just so cool because I saw a whole bunch of these cousins I had no idea existed, and yeah…

Daniela: It was like more than a hundred.

Amanda: Yeah, a whole bunch of people. And so, just that whole experience of going to the Dominican Republic and being aware of where I was, and it seemed like my whole family was just everywhere, it blew me away. And I, ever since then, I’ve had like an infatuation with getting to know about the country, embracing the culture, and getting to know my family, because that is kind of like how I grew up, and the basics of who I am.

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Daniela: Well connecting to her, it would have to be visiting the Dominican Republic when I was like seven, that was the first time I remember. It just… you know, I was young, I was still like… I considered my self being American. I didn’t know I was really Dominican at that time, so visiting there was just a different environment. I actually grew to love it, and I’m dying to go back. It was just really amazing, you know, because I met a whole bunch of people, and even my cousins, when we were younger, we would teach them how to speak English and they would teach us how to speak Spanish. It was just awesome.Interviewer: So, what was the setting like in Manhattan when you were growing up?

Amanda: So we were fortunate enough that our father got a job working in a building in downtown Manhattan, and downtown: like where the twin towers were, Manhattan. And we’ve been there… like we grew up there. And I think my parents first moved there right before I was born. So that’s the environment we’re in. And it’s very… New York itself is a very diverse city, but that area is generally… because Wall street is so close, it’s generally business people and, you know, those other kinds of people that just walk to their jobs, don’t make any kind of human contact with anyone. So it was… being in that environment, was a lot different than when we would go up to like Brooklyn, every weekend to see our grandmother. We would go to, I think it was like Cyprus Hills, East New York, deep into Brooklyn, and that was just a whole new environment. My grandmother lived on a block where there were… she lived in a house for one. We live in an apartment, basically in the basement, but it’s a nice place, don’t get me wrong [laughs]. When I would go to Brooklyn, and I would see my grandmother in her house, I was like, ‘wow, I want a house one day,’ but on my grandmother’s block there was a whole bunch of Hispanic people, and the kids would go out in the street and play, and I remember, we would walk down the block and try to play with the kids, and try to get ice cream when the ice cream truck came. I think a lot of our childhood… fortunately for us, not only did we live in a nice neighborhood, and it was different, and it was… it kind of helped us aspire to be something better, because you’re just in an environment where everyone is pretty much successful, but I think our parents definitely made an effort to take us around to places around New York. We would go to Brooklyn to see my grandmother; we would go to Queens, because we had an aunt that lived in Queens, and she baked Dominican cakes… as corny as that is. Where else did we? We would go to the Bronx, like Washington Heights. Washington Heights is heavily populated with Dominicans, and we had a couple of family members up there. And that was also another environment, because in downtown Manhattan, you won’t see a… they call it a chimi-truck, it’s basically a Dominican burger, so at late nights the truck will be out in the Bronx, and you can go up there and get you chimichurri and your jugo de chinola. It was just chill spot, in the Bronx… it was just so cool, and I was like, ‘this is awesome…we don’t get to see any of this downtown, because everything is so professional and you know…it was just different. But I think that was a good thing, that we were able to see a whole bunch of different things, and everywhere we went we saw something different, and we weren’t just like, ‘we grew up in one neighborhood and that was it.’

Interviewer: That’s great.

Daniela: Yeah, I completely agree. But living in the neighborhood we do live in, makes me want to see more, because I feel like, that is just one thing, business people, and there wasn’t a lot of kids our age in that area, so going around and seeing all these kids, and Dominicans, and

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Hispanics ,or anybody else was just great. And it felt like… being in a different…I call New York my home, because just that one area, yeah, I grew up there, but my parents take me out to like all over. New York is just my home, not just that one area.

Interviewer: So, tell me about your family: How many siblings?

Amanda: We are three girls… this is the immediate family… and my Mom and my Dad. So there’s five of us. And then on my Dad’s side…

Daniela: And our sister is married now, so…

Amanda: Oh, yeah! I completely forgot… we have a brother now, a brother-in-law!

Daniela: So what is the age difference between all of you?

Amanda: Two between us two, and I think it is like eight or seven between me and my older sister. So, it was a long time. And my older sister was actually born in the Dominican Republic, and I told my parents, ‘You couldn’t wait eight years? You could have had me over there,’ but no. And then my mom had six siblings, two boys, and four girls, well five girls including her. My father just has two brothers.

Daniela: And a half-brother.

Amanda: No. Well they grew up together. They lived in the same neighborhood, and he was going through some stuff, so my grandparents from my Dad’s side practically raised him. So he’s like our uncle. So technically there’s two, but we say there’s three. And like I said, everyone on my mom’s side of the family has at least one or two children… at least.

Interviewer: Big family.

Amanda: Big family.

Daniela: And some of their kids have kids.

Amanda: Yeah, and some of their kids have kids now. On my Dad’s side; his brothers… I think they are all married. I want to say they’re all married. But they don’t have kids, except for the ‘third brother.’ He has two sons and a daughter, but we’re not too close to with them.

Daniela: They live in the Dominican Republic.

Amanda: But yeah, that’s the people we see every weekend. Because my Dad has a whole… even though my Dad has two or three brothers, he has a boat load of cousins, and we know almost all of them, and we see them too. It’s a lot, we’re a huge family. Like, my mom’s side in itself is huge, but my Dad’s side is huge, and when we just get together, it’s just ginormous. [laughs]

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Interviewer: So tell me about where your parents grew up, or where they are from, parents and grandparents.

Amanda: So, my… I don’t know too much about my grandparents, but I can talk about my parents. Well my grandparents, both sides of them are… both of them are Dominican, so they all grew up in the Dominican Republic. My Mom’s parents… they lived, when my Mother and her siblings were born… well particularly when my Mother was born, they lived in Ocoa/Ochoa, which is kind of by Baní, between Baní and Santo Domingo. It is in the mountains. It is a really nice area. That’s where she grew up, but then they moved to Baní/Fundación. And they basically settled there, and my grandfather got a farm with… I don’t know how many acres it is, it is just huge, and it takes up a huge part of the town. So whenever we go to Fundación, everyone knows our grandfather, nobody wants to mess with us, because they know. ‘Oh, you’re Ponán’s grandchildren. Okay, okay, that’s good. Tell him I said hi.’ And growing up, when we went for the first couple of times to the Dominican Republic, we would go to their house. And it was… they lived pretty decently, and they had the big farm, they had a whole bunch of animals, a really nice house, and in that neighborhood… like my Mom tells me all these stories, like how she used to go to the park and you know, talk to boys, and she would go to school, but then get with her sisters so they can all go walking somewhere. So they were pretty comfortable. And my dad on the other hand, I know he had to go through a little more than what my Mom had to go through. And, I believe he grew up in the capital. Something interesting about his childhood was that my grandmother… my grandmother’s cousin I think it was, worked for Balaguer. So my father at a young age was very knowledgeable about politics in the country, and his uncle or cousin (or whatever he used to call that person who was related to my grandmother), used to take him to a couple of places, so my Dad… even though he wasn’t the most fortunate kid in the world, was able to gain a lot from having a family that was so well known. Also, he told all of these stories of how he was a troublemaker and he would start fights, and my grandmother didn’t know what to do with him. So I know, he definitely, he was one of those ‘rough children,’ but he started getting his things together, and he started working, and he started going to school, and I don’t think he finished… he got to finish college, but I know my Mom did, and my Mom finished college in New York, in Lehman. That’s pretty much it.

Daniela: One thing I know about my Mom’s childhood, is that growing up, they actually lived separated for a while, because my grandparents came to the United States, they tried to open up their own business, they stayed here… I know my uncle was telling me he didn’t see his mother for about twelve years. I don’t really ask a lot about their childhood, so when he told me, I was like, ‘Oh my God, how did you do that?’ But he was young when she left, so he basically grew up with his Aunt, I think it was. But they didn’t stay together, he stayed separately, and the rest of them, I think grew up together.

Amanda: Yeah, I think in talking about that, it’s interesting because now you see… I guess over time the relationship between a parent and their child just naturally gets, like more organic, but I feel you can kind of tell a little sense of resentment, or we learned that there is a little sense of resentment between my aunt and uncles and my mother and their parents. And now that they’re aging, you know, you try to do everything that you can so that you can patch up whatever the problems are. Yeah, but I know that when my grandfather… when he came one time, he opened up a chicken store, a fried chicken store, and my Mother was… her brothers and sisters would

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have to work there, and that was their job for a while, and they lived in really tight quarters, but yeah. And another thing, my grandfather from my Dad’s side of the family, he was trying to become, a pastor or something, so he was going to school, and very active in trying to pursue that, but then he met my grandmother and was like, ‘I can’t be married and be a pastor,’ so I’m gonna marry you.’ And that’s also another thing, because he was so heavily interested in religion, that influenced my Father growing up, because he/they grew up very Catholic, and then us growing up, we grew up very Catholic. So, my grandparents found a church and we started going there ever since I could remember. And it was going to church every Sunday in our little Sunday dresses and little white shoes with high socks with the frilly things on them [laughs]… oh, my gosh. It was horrible.

Interviewer: So what do your parents or grandparents do for a living? What do they still do?

Daniela: Well, my grandfather, he had a farm, so he sold, meats and stuff in the yard, but when he came here, he opened up his store, his business. My other grandfather, I’m not sure what he did. I guess it’s because growing up the only memories I have of them, they were older, so I don’t really think they did anything… I don’t know. I know my other grandfather used to spend a lot of time in the church.

Amanda: Yeah, my Father’s grandfather used to spend a lot of time in the church. And whatever he could do in the church, he was there. If it meant him getting there from seven o’clock in the morning and leaving at nine o’clock at night, he would do it. And my Mother’s father, he basically just worked on the farm. My Mother’s mother was a stay-at-home mom. My Father’s mother, I believe she was also a stay-at-home mom. So, that whole… the guys bringing home the money thing was definitely what they did.

Interviewer: And your parents?

Daniela: My Mother is a banker for Chase, an international private banker.

Amanda: She’s like, Vice President of her international private banking… of America-something.

Daniela: And my Dad is a superintendent.

Interviewer: Where did the first immigrants in your family live upon arriving in the United States?

Amanda: I want to say they went straight to Brooklyn. I remember my Mom driving us around, and saying, ‘We lived right there. You see that house over there? We lived there. You see this house over here? That’s where we used to live too. And you see this? That’s where the chicken spot was.’ So they were somewhere in that area. They definitely went to New York. And like she was saying, they came little by little. So, some of them came first and a got the situation settled, and then the rest of them came. So everything has pretty much been concentrated in Brooklyn and Queens in our family.

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Interviewer: So do you have any specific memories of these people relating to language, music, and food?

Amanda: Oh, of course! [laughs]

Daniela: My family is a big party family, so you know, I personally, when I was younger, I was the always the one, ‘I don’t want to go. I want to stay home.’ But I went and I would see, there was always bachata, merengue, and salsa, and like rice and beans, and chicken and all that good stuff. Personally, I didn’t know how to dance when I was younger, so I was just watch the steps, and think, ‘What are you doing?’ So growing up in that environment, I learned how to dance… I learned how to merengue. It’s different because a lot of people… some of my friends, their families are completely different. I’m like, ‘oh, yeah, we just had a party this weekend.’ ‘Oh, we didn’t.’ Our family, I think we’re all really close, so it’s just fun.

Amanda: We have… so because, well, from our Dad’s side of the family, because my grandfather was very involved in the church, one of his brothers started getting very involved in the church as well, and he got into choir. So he began first just by singing whatever. And I remember, the first time I heard him, I was like, ‘That’s my Tío? That’s him? That’s what he does?’ Everyone in the church was like, ‘He has this beautiful voice.’ So he would sing in the church, and then I had… one of my Father’s cousins who is currently living in the same house as my uncle that they got, a two floor/room/apartment that they got. I found out he sung. And he, on his spare time would go… he was like a wedding singer, you know? So music was brought in from that aspect where it was like all about singing and that was cool. And then when I found out that I have a voice (or whatever you want to call it), I was like, ‘Where did I get this.’ But then I remembered, it’s from my Dad’s side of the family probably. They did that, and then on my Mom’s side of the family… well my Dad’s side too, but more on my Mom’s side, because I guess we spent a little more time with them, we would get together sometimes and, you know? Why don’t if you can picture it? You’re in the backyard, and like a board and some of the older men are playing dominoes, and there’s a group of the guys that are sitting there playing tamboras, and guiras, and all these different instruments. Then the music comes on and they are just playing, ‘Tik-a-tik. Tik-a-tik. Tik-a-tik.’ And you’re just sitting there like, ‘Yay.’ So we definitely had… sometimes it was like that. They would bring out instruments, and they would play along with the music. So that was often. And like she was saying, we would dance nights away.

Daniela: Not even planned. We would get together on weekends, and put music on, and begin the party.

Amanda: Unplanned. Unplanned. So the music was running like that. Then for food, like I said, one of my aunts was a cake baker. And I honestly, I didn’t understand the difference between a Dominican cake and an American cake, I guess you can say, I didn’t get it because I’ve eaten Dominican cake for forever. So I was like, ‘What’s the big difference?’ But after tasting more, I guess, American cake, I realize that it is pretty different. So that was something. And every night in my house was something Dominican. If it was plátanos with arroz con habichuelas y pechuga de pollo, or whatever, it was just… everything I ate was Spanish food.

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Daniela: Our aunts are… they’re very into cooking, a lot. Some of them make really good desserts like dulce de leche and flan,

Amanda: Arroz con leche.

Daniela: What’s the thing with the beans?

Amanda: Habichuela con leche. We would get together, and they would just make the desserts. They would be like, ‘Hey, you want to come over? I made habichuela con dulce.’ I’ll be like, ‘Yeah, yeah yeah!’ And everyone will get together and have desserts. One of our aunts is actually… she gets orders to make pastelitos and quipes, which are very, very good. I remember, going to the Dominican Republic and they had like a whole shop just of pastelitos and quipes. So we also grew up with that. Then language… we could speak English amongst each other and amongst our cousins, but our aunts and uncles… I mean, I guess as time has gone by, they realize that they might as well learn a little bit of Spanish, I mean English. So they do talk to us English sometimes, but for the most part, everything we say is in Spanish. Like grandparents… we have to speak Spanish to. Sometimes we [laughs]… when I went home for Christmas break, my sister was telling my grandmother, ‘Abuela say ‘hi, my name is Maria.’’ And my grandmother would be like, ‘Hi. My nay-me es Maria.’ [laughs]. Sometimes she’ll be like, ‘Ahh, you know what’s I’m saying in Spanish, I don’t need to say it in English.’ So all of those things were definitely incorporated in our childhoods and they have just gone on.

Interviewer: How would you describe the use of English and Spanish in your childhood, like when you were beginning school? Did you speak a lot of Spanish when you were starting school or mostly English?

Daniela: Me personally, I didn’t speak any Spanish. Well, I spoke Spanish, but it was bad. Nobody could understand what I was saying. It was different, because I remember, when I was in kindergarten, one of my friends, she moved here from the Dominican Republic and she only spoke Spanish. I was like, ‘My Mom’s Dominican, but I don’t speak Spanish.’ But we became really good friends. She learned English and she tried teaching me a little bit of Spanish, but that just went downhill. As I got older, I learned more Spanish, which was good because being around my family, I had to know it. It was… I liked being able to speak both because it made me embrace being Dominican. I can’t be over there, so I have to bring it over here and live my life.

Amanda: In school, I think in elementary school, I didn’t really speak Spanish. I guess I understood the distinction between speaking Spanish at home and speaking English around other people that speak English. But, definitely in middle school… it might have been because my middle school was predominately Hispanic and Black (African American or whatever), and it was just, I was around them so, I don’t know. I felt like I could speak Spanish, and it wouldn’t matter, and they would understand me. But I went to a predominately white school when I was in elementary school, so I was like, ‘If I speak Spanish, no one is going to understand me.’ But sometimes, when someone would say stuff about you and you’re just mumbling to yourself… I would mumble to myself in Spanish, thinking I was cool or something. Definitely in Middle School is when I definitely started, I don’t know, I guess, speaking Spanglish. You know? I started throwing Spanish into things. I think that was like the marking point.

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Interviewer: How were your early school experiences? Do you have any memories of teachers and friends?Amanda: Oh, I have a mem… So I went to two different elementary school. The first I went for kindergarten and first grade, and the second I went from second to fifth grade. In first grade I got a book. That school was also really mixed, and I had a teacher called Miss Manase. Yes, it sounds like mayonnaise. And I had like a whole bunch of … I had like two friends and they were both Hispanic. I think one of them was even Dominican. We were just always hanging around each other. One day, she came up to us and gave us a book, and it was. What’s that book by Roald Dahl? The Witches?

Daniela: Yeah, It’s about witches.

Amanda: Yeah, it’s something about witches, but whatever. She signed this book and was like, ‘Don’t be afraid to explore more things in English and try to further find out who you are as a person.’ That seemed like a lot when I was in first grade, but when I found the book a couple of years later, I realized… it just put everything into perspective for me, because I was like, ‘I started off with these two little Hispanic friends, but we didn’t know what it meant to be Hispanic.’ And I went to this predominately white school, and I kind of lost who I was. I was like, ‘You know what, I’ll assimilate to whatever,’ But I went to middle school, I was like, ‘I can be Hispanic and it be okay.’ Then in high school, even though I did not go to a predominately Hispanic high school, we to the same high school…well she went to the high school that I… well yeah, you know. That school was predominately Asian, so again, I was like, ‘Is it okay for me?’ But I guess I was like, growing up, ‘You know what? It’s fine.’ I think that school was definitely the starting point, because it reminds me of that moment when I didn’t really know who I was, but then I… from then on, I found out who I was, and I was like, ‘That’s cool.’

Daniela: One thing that that I will never forget, and I know you won’t either. I was always, like I said before, I was always in my own little world, so when 9/11 happened. It just opened my eyes, and made me realize that there is just so much going on in this world that I don’t even know. I mean, I was young, but it made me realize, ‘wow,’ there’s really big stuff going on in this world. That’s when I started paying attention to. That’s when I opened my eyes to my family and being Hispanic. I think at that point, it was just that my life kind of changed basically, because I liked being around my family at that point. It also made me realize that life is short and you don’t know what’s going to happen, so you have to take advantage of your surroundings and be happy. Yeah.

Interviewer: Did your family move around when you were younger?

Amanda: Not really. I mean, as in like living. No, but on the weekends; trips and stuff? Yes. We would go around to different places, but most of our childhood was spent in Manhattan.

Daniela: The only moving around that really happened was when our cousins moved. Two of our cousins moved to Florida, and they were like our best friends. We were heartbroken. Every

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weekend, we would be like, ‘Mom, can we go to primo Alejandro’s house?’ And then we’d go. And another one of our cousins moved too, a couple of years later. There was always a move in our life.

Amanda: This happened like almost ten years ago, when our family started to disperse throughout the country, the family that came before, like my Mom’s brothers and sisters, and my Dad’s family. But personally, the only real move that we did was from apartment LL1 to apartment LL6, which is basically on the same floor just down the hall. [laughs]

Interviewer: When did your family first start coming to the United States? When did your parents come? You can say decades, you don’t have to say year.

Amanda: I believe my mother came in the 80s, late 80s. I know she had my sister in ‘86. After that is when they… it might have been ’87, when her and my Father came, officially. And my grandparents, probably early 80s is when they started coming, like late seventies, early 80s, they started coming.

Daniela: My Mom, well she told me, immediate family; family that I know, it was just my grandparents that came here, because I did a project on immigration. My grandparents were the first ones.

CultureInterviewer: So let’s talk about culture. What role did American culture play in your childhood, do you think? What do you remember thinking about Americans and American society when you were younger?

Amanda: I didn’t really know what the ‘American’ culture was. I speak for myself in this, because I know my younger sister had a different experience. I didn’t know what it was, and I was just so captivated by what my life was like back home and with my family, that I just kind of took things as they came, and nothing was extremely weird to me, other than the language and the interactions that people had. When I would say hi to my family and stuff, we would give each other hugs and a kiss on the cheek, but in American culture you don’t really do that to everyone, you know? That was pretty much it for me.

Daniela: Personally, I don’t know how to describe it, because I think I’m so used to it, for so long that it seems normal to me. But, yeah, as you said, the difference with the family and, you know, friends. Also… I don’t know how to describe it.

Amanda: Maybe I feel like the music. I guess. That’s a very easy way for you to distinguish cultural differences.

Daniela: Growing up, she listened to Spanish music and I listened to rock. We were just different.

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Amanda: Cleaning the house on the weekends, my Mother had on the radio and we would listen to old salsa, bachata, and merengue. That was good music to me. Then I started getting into hip-hop and stuff, and I was like, ‘Oh, I guess this is kind of cool.’ Then now, I guess I’m more integrated to the American culture. Interviewer: So in your neighborhood in Manhattan, what was the ethnic composition like?

Amanda: Predominately Caucasian. I think we started noticing a big mix as we were growing up and as we were noticing there were high schools. Where we live is right next door to Pace University campus, so there was lots of students coming from there, but for the people that lived there, it was predominately Caucasian/white.

Interviewer: You mentioned what type of food you grew up eating. What type of food do you eat now? Has it changed?

Amanda: I am dying to eat a chimichurri from the Bronx, like from a truck. Maybe because I ate Hispanic food so much that I just… like when I first came here, I’m just a freshman, but I was like, I don’t know what I’m gonna do with myself first semester. I’m not gonna have rice and beans almost every night? What? ‘What? How does this work?’ So my Mom and me were school shopping, and I got a rice cooker, because I need to eat rice and beans over there. I can’t not eat rice and beans. But, I eat similar to how I ate when I was a child, but now I crave everything so much more, because I’m so far away from it.

Daniela: Mine’s completely different. I’m kind of sick of always eating rice and beans. It’s just like, ‘Again?’ I mean, I still enjoy it, but every night, I’m not with it anymore. I want… chipotle or something, I just want something different.

Interviewer: What role has dance played in your upbringing? Can you expound on the role of dance in the Dominican community?

Amanda: Yes. I love it! Like she was saying before, how she used to watch people, I literally remember myself. We… there was a Christmas that we did at my aunt’s house in New Jersey. She cleared out her basement, and just had speakers. And we were all… all our family was dancing. I was really little and I didn’t know how to dance, and I wouldn’t dance until I was like eight, nine, ten. All I did was just sit down in a corner with my knees up, my arms around my knees, and just watching people move their feet, and listening to the music. Then there was one time that we were cleaning my house, and a salsa came on, and I asked my Mom, ‘Mommy how do you dance this?’ And it turned into a dance lesson with my parents. It was so much fun. Then, I guess it was after that that I really started to be like, ‘You know what? Maybe I can start dancing.’ So everytime I heard a salsa, merengue, or bachata, I would try to dance. And I guess I was kind of nervous the first few times, because I was born here, I didn’t want my family to be like, ‘Oh, yeah. You don’t know what you’re doing. Stop trying to act like you know what you’re doing.’ I really wanted to embrace where I came from, so I was like, ‘You know what? I’m gonna do this justice.’ So I took it upon myself to learn how to dance. Never took a class in my life. But, shoo, I don’t wanna toot my own horn, but I can definitely say I’m getting better, and it was interesting because I actually went to the Domincan Republic. I went to go do a service trip

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in 2006, and my cousin, he was playing Spanish music. And he said, ‘I bet you can’t dance to any of this.’ I said, ‘Oh, yeah?’ He said, ‘I’ll give you twenty-dollars if you can dance to this.’ Then that night we went to a party, and he invited a couple of his friends, and I felt really cool because I was like, “Oh my God, I’m going out with my cousins, I never went out.’ His friends started dancing with me, and they were like, ‘Whoa! You actually know how to dance.’ I was like, ‘Just because I’m from… I live in America, doesn’t mean I don’t know how to dance.’ Dance has definitely played a huge role for me. I love the music, and what do you do when you listen to music? I dance. It just works.

Daniela: She started really young. I didn’t. In middle school, I was still a big mess with dance and Spanish music. I didn’t even want to dance in front of everybody. Until after a while of watching everybody, I was just like, ‘You know what? Let me just try it.’ I tried it, and I wasn’t that great. I’m still learning, but I think I’m pretty good. Dancing with her helped a little bit. I’m progressing with learning. I used to love watching everybody. I was like, ‘Oh my God, I wanna dance like that when I grow up,’ and now I’m just like, ‘I’m gonna actually put in the effort to try.’ So it was different, but I loved it. I love dancing to Spanish music.

Interviewer: So you mentioned you were raised Catholic, do you want to tell me more about that and how it relates to your life now?

Amanda: Well, Easter is this weekend. One of the biggest… we really, growing up, went to church every Sunday. I think that there were times that we would go during the week sometimes. On rare occasions we would go during the week. Every Sunday we were at church at 9 o’clock in the morning for mass in Spanish, dressed up. Then afterwards we would get breakfast with our grandparents. I guess,…we..I personally… we both did…

Daniela: We got baptized and had our first communion in the same church. Then growing up we had to choose. It was our choice kind of, if we wanted to do confirmation or not.

Amanda: No, it was our choice. If you say kind of, then you didn’t do it for the right reasons.

Daniela: I mean, no. I did do it for the right reasons, but you know, my Mom… very Catholic. She was also like, ‘You know you should really think about…’ That probably took me an extra year to do it because, I was like, ‘I don’t really know if I want to do it,’ but I ended up doing it.

Amanda: So we definitely have gone through all the expected practices (I guess is what we do) at this age. I’ll speak for myself when I can say that in coming here, for a while, I didn’t really understand why I was going to church, and I didn’t really understand the Catholic religion. I was like, ‘What is this?’ But then, in going through my confirmation, I got incredibly spiritual. I loved going to mass. It felt right and it felt good. Then coming here, I don’t know what it is, but I haven’t been going to mass too much. One of the things that I can remember is that for all the days, for Christmas, and Easter… our family would do... We would go to mass. Then would have a huge get together afterwards and everybody was there, we were all eating and laughing and dancing and having fun. This is the first Easter that I’ll be away from my family. My sister called me just the other day and was like, ‘Are you going to mass? You should go to mass. Mommy says you should go to mass? And I really… it just goes to show me that as close as I was to

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everything, I’ve just been distancing myself, and it happens. I’m trying to work on it. It’s definitely played a big role in our upbringing. We had to go to Sunday School. Sometimes our grandparents would pick us up, or our uncle would pick us up. Then hearing my uncle sing. Oh, and I actually got involved in the church too, because they had a showcase, and I got to sing in it. That was… that felt really good. But it’s definitely always there.

Daniela: It was definitely for me… the sermons were always in Spanish, I was like, ‘What are they saying?,’I never understood it until last year, I went to mass in English, because of my super little cousin, and that was just when I was just like, ‘Wow!’ Even though I understood… I understand Spanish, growing up I was just like… even in middle school I was like… in high school I was like, ‘You’re saying too much at once, I can’t really understand you.’So when I went to mass in English too, it was really like, ‘Wow!.’ I actually want to go to church now, more often than I usually do, but you know, English, so I can understand what’s going on.

Interviewer: On a scale of 1-10. How connected do you feel to your Dominican roots/Dominican culture?

Amanda: I’m at a 10. Well, no I’m lying. I’m probably at a 9.8

Daniela: 7.5. Around there. Still trying to get more in touch with it, but I’m getting there.

Amanda: I feel like the only thing holding me back from a ten is: I feel like don’t know enough about the history. I can talk for years… for days about the culture, the language, and the people. But the history of the country itself, (which I am making my own little project this summer, just to research)… just to understand how the country came to be what it is. I feel like once I know that I can be like, ‘Yes. I’m a proud Dominican!’

Interviewer: How would you describe the Dominican American community in the U.S.? Do you feel that there is a prevalence of Dominican American communities, or are Dominican Americans well dispersed in other communities?

Daniela: There is a lot of them in New York. Mainly in Washington Heights, that’s where you can find us all. I picture that, in some ways as little D.R. because I haven’t been to the campo since I was like seven. That’s personally why I feel so out of touch with it, because I haven’t been there in a while, and I don’t know what’ going on. I picture Washington Heights as the closest thing I have to the D.R., and I feel like, whenever I go over there, I get so happy, it’s like my people.

Amanda: I guess I would say that the Dominican community is very dispersed throughout the U.S., and sometimes… I feel that that’s like with any culture, like it gets like integrated or becomes more prevalent or obvious in certain areas, and so in Washington Heights it’s obvious. And if you say you are from New York and someone who knows New York, and you say I’m a Dominican from New York, they will immediately ask you, ‘Do you live in Washington Heights?’ And you’ll be like, ‘No I don’t that’s not where we only live.’ So that in itself goes to show that we are dispersed. But also, I know that there are some Dominicans that will probably identify with being more Hispanic or more Caribbean or more African, so that may also integrate

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them more into other communities. For the most part, I feel that we’re pretty well known and pretty well dispersed. I mean, not as well-known as some others or something else.

Daniela: Puerto Ricans

Amanda: Yeah, not as well-known as Puerto Ricans. But we’re pretty well known.

Interviewer: Do you seek to find a community of Dominican Americans to identify with?

Amanda: Oh, yes! The first time I came here, I came with my parents, and we stopped at a Pepboys [autoshop]. And we walk in. We drove here for ten hours, and I had my ipod in the whole time, because I was like, ‘We don’t know what’s on these radios,’ and you know, my grandmother was with us, and I was like, ‘I’m not gonna have her listen to none of this nonsense.’ And I had a whole load of Spanish music, so I was like listening to it, whatever. Tehn we get to this Pepboys and like before we got to the Pepboys, we were like going through the radio stations, and we couldn’t find anything Spanish. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh! What is this? Where are we? Why isn’t there any Spanish?’ Then when we got into the Pepboys there was Spanish music playing, and we were like, ‘Oh my gosh! There must be Hispanic people here.’ So when we got to the counter, the person there was Hispanic, and the first thing we asked the guy was, are there any Dominicans in Nashville? And he was like, ‘No. Not any community. Not that I know of.’ I was like, ‘gah!’ But definitely, whenever I travel, I’ve only been to a couple of states in America, but I’m always like where are the Dominicans. What are they like here? You know?

Daniela: Even in Middle School. My middle school was mostly African American. I was trying to meet a Dominican. I met one in sixth grade on the first day of school. We sat down next to each other, and I had a little flag on my keys. She’s like, ‘Oh, you’re Dominican?’ She was like, ‘Yeah, me too!’ And we became really close. Even in the high school I’m in now, and immediately I was like, alright I need to find Dominicans. Luckily, I found two. It’s okay because we stay together.

Amanda: It’s better than nothing.

IdentityInterviewer: Let’s get into the identify part of this interview. So, for some of these questions if you want to just answer with one word; short answers, that’s fine. So, when people ask you the question, “What are you,” how do you respond?

Amanda: Dominican.

Daniela: Dominican.

Interviewer: Has the way you describe yourself changed over the years?

Amanda: Yes, it has. I went through: I don’t know what I am to I’m Dominican.

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Daniela: Same.

Interviewer: How do you identify yourself ethnically?Amanda: Dominican

Daniela: Dominican

Interviewer: How do you identify yourself racially?

Amanda: I hate this question. All these damn race questions. I mean, I would say Hispanic, even though technically that’s not a race, but… Then I specify that I’m Dominican.

Daniela: Yeah. I want people to know.

Interviewer: What is your nationality?

Amanda: American

Daniela: American

Interviewer: Do you identify with one particular culture more than another? What is that culture?

Amanda: Dominican

Daniela: Dominican

Interviewer: How does your college tend to identify you ethnically…or, ethnically first? And Racially?

Amanda: Hispanic or latino/latina.

Daniella: Hispanic.

Amanda: Some people actually thought I was African American. I got told that a couple of times.

Interviewer: How do your peers at school see you ethnically?

Daniella: Dominican.

Amanda: My peers know that I’m Dominican. I… well at least the ones that know me, I think they all know that I’m Dominican or Hispanic.

Interviewer: and Racially?

Amanda: Racially… Hispanic too. I wanna say… I wanna believe in my heart. They do.

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Interviewer: And people who don’t know you very well. What do they typically guess that you are?

Daniella: Puerto Rican.

Amanda: Other than that… when I was told I was African American, I’ve generally just gotten other Hispanic. I was like told once that I was Hawaiian or something. It was Hawaiian… Filipino. I don’t know. I was like, ‘Really, you think?’

Interviewer: Why do you think people tend to identify you in these ways?

Amanda: I really… Actually it might be (no lie), because of my face. I feel like I have very almond eyes, which I say is because there are so many different types of people in the Dominican Republic that you know, I just happened to get the almond eyes, and you know? I don’t know what happened.

Daniella: I mean, the only time I was ever… someone thought I was Puerto Rican was I guess I was learning Spanish and I had that Puerto Rican finish.

Amanda: Oh, and also the complexion of my skin. I’m not really dark, but I’m not really light. I’m somewhere in the middle. Or I’d like to think I am.

Interviewer: How would you describe yourself if you were living in the Dominican Republic?

Amanda: How I would describe myself?

Interviewer: Um hmm. So, racially in the Dominican Republic considering just how they identify there.

Daniella: I think I would honestly be considered white. Even though I know how to dance, I know how to speak Spanish, I’m different. You could go there, they can tell, you’re from New York, you’re from Florida, you’re not from here.

Amanda: Actually, I had to do a scavenger hunt in Washington Heights. I went to this restaurant an there was this jukebox, and there was a whole bunch of older men. Everyone in there was Dominican, well I believe they were Dominican from the way they were talking. I went to the jukebox and was pressing all these buttons. Since I was doing the scavenger hunt, I was looking for things in the jukebox. One of the men came up to me and goes, ‘Mira, gringa!’ I was like, ‘What?’ I know he’s not talking to me. ‘Gringa. What?’ No one has ever called me that. I don’t really know what they would… I mean, I might be considered black, but…and it may be because I’m more culturally infused, but I don’t know.

Innterviewer: Have you ever described your background as mixed race/multiracial/or mestizo?

Amanda: No

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Daniella: No

Interviewer: Do you tend to think about your racial/ethnic identity frequently? If so, what do you think that this is the result of?

Amanda: For me, personally, I think it is the result of being exposed to other people. In making a friend with a non-Hispanic, I know that our lives are different, but it just makes you that much more curious to be like, ‘Why these differences? Where do they come from? What are these differences?’ Like, you know? It’s not necessarily a bad thing or a good thing. It’s just generally out of curiosity.

Daniella: I do, but think it’s just my lack of knowledge about the Dominican Republic and about my background.

Interviewer: What do you think is the greatest factor affecting the way people identify racially in the Dominican Republic? Ex. physical features (hair texture, skin tone, etc.), social class, ancestry, etc.

Amanda: I feel like it might be a mixture of both (appearance, comportment), but I know that earlier, not too earlier, but when my Mom was growing up… Dominicans are very racist. Very racist. Light skinned Dominicans thought they were better than darker skinned Dominicans. There was that racial tension. That “racial tension.” I think it is so silly. I feel like everyone over there embraces the same culture or has very fundamental similarities. There is no reason why you should be complaining if someone is darker or lighter than you, or trying to make a bigger…

Daniella: It’s also the money.

Interviewer: So class.

Amanda: The poor. There’s a high amount of…

Daniella: You get robbed over there. A lot of people get robbed, like my grandparents. Even though they’re really known in their area they’ve gotten robbed before.

Amanda: And they’re considered a little higher class. But the poor community is definitely very large in the Dominican Republic and that’s also another thing that…

Interviewer: What do you think is the greatest factor affecting racial identity in the United States?

Amanda: Ignorance. Plain and simple.

Interviewer: Do you think people tend to identify depending on appearances, or class, or ancestry?

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Amanda: Definitely appearance. I think it… unfortunately it comes down to appearance, like even on this campus. People are like, “Oh, are you black? Are you White?’ I’m like, ‘No. I’m Hispanic. I’m Dominican.

Daniella: I agree with her.

Interviewer: Has anyone ever categorized you as African American? And tell me about this experience? Amanda: Actually, there has been two times. One here and one when I was in middle school. The one here was just very casual. ‘Are you black?’ and I was like, ‘No I’m not. I’m Dominican.’ I’ve never gotten that one…no one has said it to me like that. The first time I was referred to as African, or Black, or in the terms of the woman, a “nigger,” I was going to the grocery store just because my Mother had asked me to go get some stuff, we were all home and she wanted to cook us a meal with food that everybody likes. So she started cooking, and I went to the grocery store to try to get some stuff, and I was walking in the aisle, just like listening to my music. This old white woman came in on a walker and got startled and started screaming, ‘You nigger. Get away from me you nigger. You nigger. You nigger. That was the first time anyone had ever called me that. So I heard it, took off my headphones and looked around and was like, ‘Is she talking to me? Are you sure you’re talking to me? Like, what?’ So I turned around and there was no one else in the aisle but me. So I realized she was talking about me and I was just so confused. I was like, ‘What? What just happened?’ The people from the grocery store were like grabbing the old woman and like, ‘No, no mam. Please stop screaming.’ I had to pay for my stuff and I walked home. I remember walking into my apartment. My arms were shaking, and my Mom was like, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I just put everything down on the table and just started crying. You learn in school about racism and all that, but it was the first time that it was actually clear to me, and even though, I’m not African American, to be screamed at like that, and for that word to be used, was just beyond me. I did not know what to think, what to do. That was the first time. And I don’t know… it’s haunted me ever since. The first time was more in your face. And the second time was like, ‘So are you black?’ Which I can take, as opposed to someone screaming at me and waving pasta in my face or something like that. [laughs]

Interviewer: What about you Daniella?

Daniella: I’ve never really had any experiences like that. Everybody pretty much knows that I’m Dominican. I used to rep it. So, I’ve never had anybody confused.

Amanda: That’s true. For her, she used to…

Daniella: Oh, man. I went all out.

Amanda: She used to be decked out in Dominican stuff.

Daniella: And this is when I didn’t really… I still don’t know much, but I knew less then what I know now. I had a cell phone case with a flag on it. I had a key chain. I had a necklace. Everybody knew. Wherever I went, they were like, ‘Okay, she’s Dominican.’

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Interviewer: Has anyone ever categorized you as Caucasian?

Amanda: Not to my knowledge.Interviewer: What about mixed race/biracial/multiracial/mestizo?

Amanda: Umm. I don’t think so. Nope.

Interviewer: What about a racial group not previously mentioned? Asian you mentioned.

Amanda: Asian. Yeah, that was it.

Interviewer: And then an ethnic group other than your own.

Daniella: Puerto Rican.

Amanda: She said Puerto Rican. I think Puerto Rican too. Yeah, people are always like, ‘You Puerto Rican?’ I’m like, ‘No. We’re different. I’m Dominican.’

Interviewer: Have you ever experienced racial or ethnic discrimination in the Nashville-area or in this country, based on what someone thought your race or ethnicity was?

Amanda: Well there was that time at the supermarket.

Daniella: A lot of people, til this day, because Dominicans are known to not have a lot of money or… mainly they’re known to drink a lot, so people always tell me, you know, ‘You’re an alcoholic.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t drink like that. No.’ Or they’ll be like, ‘Oh, you’re poor.’ One of my friends actually… I know he was just playing around, but I was just like, ‘Really?’ I brought a group of my friends to my house once, and he looked around and he was like, ‘Are your parents drug dealers? Because I thought everything was Dominican with this house.’ I was like, ‘No, they make their money the good way. No.’

Amanda: Yeah. That misconception is very true, because fortunately for our family, my parents have made it so that we’re comfortable in the situation we live. But there are a lot of people in our very family who are not that comfortable. But, it’s not because of anything illegal, or any other stupid misconceptions that people have.

Interviewer: Do you feel like you are viewed differently in Nashville based on your ethnicity? Or in other parts in the United States?

Amanda: Well, going back to the whole black and white thing. I don’t know if it’s about… I feel like the north, and New York in particular, people know who you are or what you are. If you come to Nashville and you’re Hispanic or Caribbean, you’re Hispanic or Caribbean. But in New York, people will know from the way you talk, from the way you walk if you are Cuban, if you are Puerto Rican, if you are Haitian, if you are Jamaican, if you’re Brazilian, if you’re Peruvian. There is a distinction that may have to do with geographically, like where people are situated, but

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also just being around it a lot you understand, and there is less ignorance about who someone is. But here in Nashville it is just that you get clumped… and it may have something to do with just the south in general, you know, the history that this part of the country has.

Interviewer: Do you think that many other Dominican Americans racially identify the same way as you?

Amanda: No.

Daniella: No.

Interviewer: How do you feel they identify?

Daniella: I feel like a lot of… there are some Dominicans that… [Mentions acquaintance’s name]. She’s not Dominican, but she’s some type of Hispanic and she doesn’t like to identify. She’ll be like, ‘No. I’m American.’

Amanda: Yeah. Some people just don’t like to claim it. I had a couple friends who in middle school, did not claim Dominican. They were like, ‘I’m black. I’m black.’ To everyone else they were black because they had dark skin, and they carried themselves just how all the other black kids were carrying themselves. They were just like, ‘Oh, you black. That’s cool.’ Then when it came time…when people started growing up, and they realized… they look into their past. They were like, ‘Oh. I’m Dominican.’ Then people wanted to be like, ‘Yeah. Right, I’m Dominican now. Now I can rep it. I’m Dominican’ I feel like sometimes also, people who aren’t as knowledgeable or respectful, like give homage to the Dominican Republic and the roots that made them what they are, and also are in poor living situations, or just around bad influences, do end up getting into gangs, like. DDB. And what’s the other one?

Daniella: Trini.

Amanda: And Trini. ‘That’s like our people, and if we join in we can be around other brothers like us, and learn more about the Dominican history because that’s what the gang was founded on.’ But it’s just like, ‘You’re looking in the wrong places.’

Daniella: They’re both Dominican gangs, and they go against each other. It’s just, ‘Why do you need to go against your own people?’ It’s dumb, but at least maybe one gang for all of you, don’t have two.

Amanda: Yeah, I definitely know. In New York, there are a lot of people who will not claim it, will not speak Spanish, don’t care if they speak Spanish. Even if they’re half and half they just… it’s whatever. It doesn’t matter. But for me, it’s like, ‘This is what you came from. You know? You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for whatever happened there. If you want to believe it or not, that’s where you come from. For you to ignore that, I feel it’s disrespectful.

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Interviewer: Do you feel that a lot of your Dominican friends and acquaintances acknowledge the Spanish, Native Indian, and African descent that they come from? Or do they not really acknowledge it?

Amanda: I mean, I don’t know if it’s my ignorance, but I don’t feel I’m too ignorant about that… because I understand that Dominicans aren’t like a Hispanic… there wasn’t a Hispanic person that was born and we all just came from there. There was definitely mixes of Taino and Indians and blacks and Spanish. We’re just a mess of people, like altogether, and that’s why sometimes you see Dominicans with good hair, Dominicans with bad hair. Sometimes you see Dominicans with light skin, sometimes you see Dominicans with dark skin. All those differences, it’s just, for the people that I know, the people that I mostly hang around (because we can tolerate each other long enough), it’s because we acknowledge that. You know? Some people may think they’re more black, or more Indian, or more Hispanic, but other people will just be like, ‘You know what? I’m Dominican.’ Whatever that whole mess was, wherever I came from: that’s cool. The umbrella term for it is Dominican, and we’re just gonna say it’s Dominican and be fine with it.

Daniella: Me and my friends, we don’t really acknowledge it. I mean, we know it’s there, but we’re just like, ‘In the end, we’re Dominican.’ So, we’re Dominican.

Interviewer: What do you think are some of the reasons for rejecting or denying the background?

Amanda: For people that do reject it (like completely reject it), I think it may have to do with different stereotypes that people have with those races. As unfortunate as it is, people sometimes don’t want to be looked at as those stereotypes, and they’re just associating one thing over the other. Or, they do like the stereotypes that are associated with it, so they’ll be like, ‘Okay. I’ll be that because that sounds better.’ The whole conception of race and ethnicity, it gets really sticky when you talk to people, because at the end of the day you just say what you are, and people can say you’re something else. It really comes down to what you think. It’d be better if people wre more educated, and made more educated statements, or just completely disregarded the race question. Then we wouldn’t have all these questions, but Dominicans are just like Americans in that sense.

Daniella: It was cool because the people we grew up around, their parents, completely disregard the fact that they’re Dominican, and their Dominican is Dominican. But personally I feel… like I mentioned before, the whole gang thing… that honestly, sometimes, it’s shameful. It’s like, ‘You’re bringing shame upon us because you’re showing that Dominicans are bad people, and not everyone is bad. That’s not right. That goes through the whole… One of my friends, she really, really hates that whole gang thing. She’s proud to be Dominican, but there’s times when she’s like, ‘Really? You’re gonna do this? Make all of us look bad when you’re just being dumb.

Amanda: That’s really interesting because I always think about… If have kids, and my kids have kids, and their kids have kids, what are they gonna be like? Are they even gonna acknowledge the Dominican culture? I was just like, ‘Maybe I’ll just run back to the Dominican Republic, have my child, raise them there for like two years, so they really know who they are, then come back.’ But definitely, the longer you’re here in the U.S. you kind of distance yourself from those roots and begin to associate with whatever you’re around.

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Interviewer: Do you feel the U.S. is moving towards allowing minorities to identify however they choose>

Amanda: I wanna say yes. Just because in the census there is… you can put that you are Latino/Latina, but at the same time even if you put race down, people are gonna identify you with what they want to identify you with. So I know someone who is Hispanic- Puerto Rican, and they’re like, ‘I’m black.’ I can’t say no to you. You are what you say you… you are what you wanna be. You wanna be black? You think you’re more black? Go ahead. It doesn’t matter. As for the U.S., I think they’re making strides into accepting minorities. I’d like to believe in a governmental point of view. But in society, I feel like there is still some tension between people and Hispanics, especially because sometimes when you say you’re Hispanic, they’ll be like, ‘Are you Mexican? Are you here illegally? Do you have a green card?’ No. Some of us gain our citizenship and were born here, you know?

Daniella: I agree.

Interviewer: Where do you see Dominican Americans in the next 30 years? How will they be viewed in American society? Will their racial/ethnic identities change?

Daniella: For the one, how they will be viewed, as much as it hurts me to say, I feel like everybody’s gonna look down upon Dominicans because the generations aren’t coming… I have to say that my generation’s pretty bad. My age group, they just do stupid things and it’s just, like I said before, it’s shameful. They’re influencing their little brothers and little sisters to act this way, so I feel like like it’s gonna get worse over the years.

Amanda: I don’t know what the influx of Dominicans coming into the United States is? I’d like to think that they’ll become a little more prevalent, and a little more known or recognized. That may include just integrating with other races. So for example, I was looking up Típico music, the really old music from the Dominican Republic. I came across this group, who are a modern group, but they embrace the African culture of the D.R. and all their music is around that. If you do something like that where you recognize the African culture, or you recognize a European culture, it’s definitely easier for you to disperse into the American community. So if they do come and they disperse themselves, I feel like people will know Dominicans more, but if they just keep to themselves, and don’t do anything they might get a bad reputation, and the situation won’t be good, and people in America will have a disregard or distaste for them.

Community Involvement

Interviewer: Last section: Community Involvement. What organizations are you involved with in Nashville or in high school?

Amanda: I’m involved with spoken word. I want to do it more, because I’ve only done it with one piece (I wanna say), but using Spanish in one of my pieces… I think that’d be awesome, so that’s something I wanna try to work on this summer. But I also am thinking about getting more involved with, like I said, VAHS [Vanderbilt Association of Hispanic Students] and CSA

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[Caribbean Students Association], just to bring that out a little more. I don’t know if it’s just because in college you learn a lot more about who you are, because I learned a lot more in middle school by itself and carried that through high school. But in college it’s just like, ‘You know? I could do more.’ So I definitely want to do more to understand who I am.

Daniella: I’m in this program called ‘LOV [Leave Out Violence] .’ She was in it too. I’ve been in that since my freshman year of high school, so hopefully it’s gonna continue. And also, in school there’s ‘Students Unite to Appreciate Diversity,’ been in there since freshman year too. It’s gotten different.

Interviewer: How do you feel you are perceived in the organizations you’re a part of?

Amanda: I think I’m perceived like everyone else; like a poet. I may not fully embrace that title, and completely understand it. I think another poet, maybe still a little amateurish because I haven’t really written too much, but that’s pretty much it. I’m hoping that if I do join VAHS or CSA, they’ll see that I’m a really serious and dedicated person to the cause of bringing people aware of who Hispanics and Caribbean’s are.

Daniella: With the whole ‘Leave Out Violence’ program, I think that I’m just like everyone else at this point. We do a lot of poetry, a lot of writing, a lot of photography. I feel, as long as I’ve been… I’m an amateur in photography, but with poetry… that’s my main thing. A poet.

ConclusionInterviewer: Conclusion. Is there anything that we did not discuss in the interview that you want to bring up before we conclude?

Amanda: We talked a lot.

Daniella: Yeah.

Interviewer: This was so good. Thank you immensely for your involvement.