Personal Narrative: Growing Up In Chicago

Hello, reading over your discussion about growing up in Inglewood California brings to mind my African American co-worker who talks about living in Compton. She tells us often how growing up in that area you had to carry either a gun or a knife and be on guard whenever you go anywhere. She is a very dear friend of mine and she reminds me she is a changed person from the way she used to be. Her mother still lives in California but in a better neighborhood now but she is planning a trip to see her mother. My friend often tells me years ago she and I would have never gotten along because she had so much anger inside her. I am glad my friend did get out of that neighborhood alive and somehow found in her heart to not keep anger inside.

I grew up in a broken city. I grew up in a city believed to produce thugs and drug addicts, nothing else. I grew up in a city where you are expected to be tough and fight back instead of turning the other cheek. I grew up in a city where minorities are looked down upon. I grew up in a city where it is common for violent fights to break out right outside of your school window. I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. Despite the negativity found within it, I love my city because it provided me with the perfect example of what not to be.

Growing up in the Chicago area was a great experience for me, I was always a good kid but I had always struggled in school. The reason that I had a hard time in school was that I had A.D.D which was the cause of my distraction. Entering Pritzker College Prep was a different experience for me because I was overwhelmed, the reason as to why I felt overwhelmed was because of the amount of homework we got. I ended up spending nights where I would do my homework and wouldn’t get a sufficient amount of sleep and would also cause me to fall asleep in class. My grades started to drop which caused me to stop caring in school, so I also decided to just stop doing my homework and it caused a decrease in my grades.

“Dad, I can’t talk, I'm heading out right now,” I said while hugging the phone with my shoulder up to my ear. He told me to be cautious on the roads, considering the blizzard we had just had a few days ago. It was an unusually calm day in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. A perfect day to travel, the snow on the ground glistened as it had just been freshened with a new coat from the light snowfall early this morning. The sun was barely noticeable from the distance as the tip of it lit up the outline of city. It gave the trees a soft glow making it look like there were thousands of microscopic diamonds floating off the branches of the bare trees through the breeze, carrying them across the neighborhood and greeting themselves at the window

I witnessed my cousins boyfriend corpse lying on my neighbors lawn. It was a humid summer night around 3:30 when I peeked through my window and saw my devastated cousin sobbing uncontrollably on my decaying porch. Being from East chicago, Indiana has transformed me into the person I am today.

Being from a town where there are no skyscrapers and a growing community, I had never experienced the real feeling of being in an actual crowded city. This city is like none I’ve ever been in, I had been in Miami, Atlanta, and Charlotte but those cities were nothing like the city I was about to visit. In October of 2016 my older brother ran into a medical problem causing us to have to visit a doctor that was located hundreds of miles away. From then on we had to travel to Teaneck, NJ, but minutes away from that town was the largest city in the United States which was New York City. I had seen movies, television shows, and news about New York, but I really did not believe there could be a place so full of life, so I was finally getting the chance

You, a “Chicago kid” as a good friend keeps telling me, are going to have a big change in your life. That sounded like I was some cheesy fortune cookie but it is true. You have decided to go to the suburban area and go to that school full of white people. Oh and do you remember that lady who thought you came from another country when you went with your mom? Yep, that’s the high school you are going to. Anyway, check out this sacred wizardry that I have discovered to get good, or at least, decent grades in a middle school that took steroids.

I have written many essays since I was in middle school yet most of my writing was not that important besides for a grade. Yet there is one piece of writing I wrote that change my life and felt that it had an important impact to The City of Chicago. My teacher during that time wanted the class to enter in a citywide competition, which is called “Do The Write Thing”. It is a way for students to voice their opinions on how to stop the violence in Chicago. I wanted to help reduce the violence in Chicago since many youths are being killed in the streets every single day. In my paper, I mainly focused on three body paragraphs. The first one was why the violence in the city was increasing. The second one was some type of violence that I have witness in my own personal life. The final paragraph

All I could fit in my only small bag was a few clothes and a toothbrush and all my parents

Growing up in Southern California, I was surrounded by coastal culture, which has influenced me in many ways. No matter whether I lived in San Diego or Ventura county, I was never more than ten minutes away from the beach. Every weekend, it seemed, my dad would take us to the beach as family so we could play in the water, build sandcastles, catch hermit crabs, see the tide pools, and most of all, spend time together. I was enchanted by all the beach had to offer. Every sandcastle built was a palace for a hermit crab and every tide pool a thriving community. Whenever I stepped into the water, my imagination would run wild. Despite how often we went, I always enjoyed our days at the beach.

From the very start I was an adventurous child. I am always looking for something new to try, something no one else would even think of doing. So, I’m going to take you to the first time I left school. By myself.

Imagine the news headlines filled with nothing but people like you - same hair, skin, defining features - except all the headlines are filled with death. Death at the hands of people we are all taught to trust with our safety. This is how my 2015 summer had been. Days upon days of headlines with black people being killed by “peace” officers. As the list of names grew longer, it became apparent that there was no intention to protect the black community, instead, the public was being “protected” from us. Growing up in a community of minorities, I had come to believe that there was a sense of solidarity in our struggles. I was wrong in thinking our shared status meant unity. At the core of every marginalized community, is a sense of anti-blackness. This harsh realization happened during a class discussion when everyone was throwing into my face that ultimately my feelings and thoughts did matter. I was reminded that I was an other and I stood alone in this fight for my community.

I have been born and brought up in America, therefore, I identify with the American culture. The American culture borrows heavily from different cultures across the globe. The neighborhood I was brought up in was instrumental in the definition of and formation of my culture and the norms that I surrounded myself with and came to identify with. My parents taught me the value of education, as in American culture education is one of the most highly valuable attributed. I have also taken up Christianity as a religion to identify with as I have learned from the people in my surroundings.

Growing up, I did not realize that getting a job was going to be so difficult. It may be different in other towns. I grew up in California and was excited to be older and be productive. California gave you that worthwhile rush that encouraged you to get up and go on an adventure. Then my family and I moved to a college town in a different state, 7 years ago, where it’s less noisy. It was certainly a different environment and personally, I love it.

I grew up a suburban neighborhood in southeastern Louisiana. At first it was a relatively quiet place, and the people who lived on my street were kind and, well, neighborly. Life as a kid back then was about as typical as it gets in my opinion, but, as the years went by, things just seemed to get worse. What was once a place for fun with the neighbor's kids and barbeques or pool parties for the whole neighborhood quickly became a cesspool of divorce, solitude and generally antisocial behavior. Kids started dropping out of school, getting pregnant, stealing, and some my classmates in high school tragically passed away under horrific circumstances. Eventually, even I had to forsake my education due to crisis, and right at the beginning of my