Listening Posts 2 & 3

I got my chance to visit the students at the Out of School Program again. I was just as nervous the second time around as I was the first.

Last time was a bust, so I was hopeful someone would talk to me and not look at me like a plastic doll.

When the students saw me, their response was a lot warmer than before. One girl smiled at me and pointed out that I wasn't wearing my cardigan. I laughed it off and pretended it wasn't a total diss but more of an endearment kind of thing.

I sat at the large table and waited for someone to start talking. They just stared.

Then, a girl burst through the door, talking loudly and she was well received by everyone in the room. Xaviera, the girl from my previous meeting told me this girl was sure to talk.

"Her name is Michelle, a 19-year-old mother of four," one girl said.

I sat in shock at such an introduction.

I asked her if she would tell me her story and she agreed. I thought it was weird how excited she got to talk to a total stranger.

She told me she has four babies. I couldn't help myself and blurted out, "when did you start?"

She smiled and said she started having sex with a 27-year-old man when she was 13. It sounded like a soap opera to me and she read the doubt in my eyes. It made her a little hesitant to talk after that.

I asked her how she could be in a relationship with someone 14 years older than her and not think it unusual. She said he lied about his age and she didn't know any better. After all, she was just a kid.

By the time she was 13, she was pregnant with twins.

She lost one child at birth when the umbilical cord wrapped around the baby's neck. She named her daughters Natalie and Nicole, a name she came to hate.

"This was a difficult time for me. I was 13 and completely alone with a newborn and handling the death of her sister," she said.

I asked her where her mother was throughout this whole time and she told me she was in and out of her life. She had her own issues to deal with.

At 15, she was pregnant again with another little girl, Janise. Her boyfriend at the time started out as the perfect gentleman until he showed his true colors, she said.

He tried to shoot her with a shotgun but lost control and cocked the gun back, shooting the bullet over her head. She realized she had to get out of the situation and fled.

She found herself with a baby, another one on the way and totally alone.

"Wait. Your parents were still nowhere to be found?" I said.

She explained she was taught sex from a very early age and said her mother used to have sex with different men, she can recall at least 30 of them, and smoke crack in front of her so her situation was normal.

She grew up seeing this and thought it was okay, not realizing the consequences.

"It's not just dip and go," she learned later as she got older.

Michelle just kept having sex and kept having babies. She smiled and said, "That's something I love. I love having kids. Babies are my world."

All the while I'm sitting there in my judgy-wudgy suit thinking this girl is nuts.

She was happy with her out of the ordinary life and when she met her husband, Richard, she thought life couldn't get better.

As she told me her story, I was freaking out. I felt my eyes bulging out of my head and I sat waiting for the camera crew to jump out of the closet and tell me this was one big joke. They never came.

The eerie part of it all was that Michelle shows no remorse or regret for her life as twisted as I think it is.

Here I am, this preppy little girl with her tape recorder and here she is this girl, two years younger than me, totally fine with how messed up I think her life is. She couldn't picture it any other way.

How can this be? I thought to myself.

I snapped myself back into her story and listened to her tell me how her husband was a drug-addict and alcoholic when they first met. Michelle had never been into anything of that sort until they started dating and it led to a downward spiral that she wasn't ready for and I wasn't ready to hear. Like if her story wasn't wild enough!

She had two daughters with him, Charlene was the first.

At the time, Michelle was working as a driver for her brother's escort service. She was in charge of making sure her brother's "girls" looked good for the clients and that they got in and out on time. She was also in charge of collecting the money from clients in exchange for half of the night's profits.

Living the good life, she started partying with her husband's old friends and got tied up in the "bad stuff."

She stressed to me that she always made sure her daughters were taken care of when she went out and never neglected them even though she would be gone for days at a time.

It got ugly one night when Michelle refused to give her friend Nicole money for cocaine and as revenge, the girl called the Department of Children and Families.

They came and drug tested Michelle and removed all three of her children from her custody. It was June 10, 2007.

That was the last day she touched alcohol or drugs.

She completed all her court mandated classes and completed a drug rehabilitation stay, but with no avail- she didn't get her kids back. The case was closed and her kids were separated. One lives with Michelle's sister, another with her father and another was placed in foster care.

She's happy to at least have visitations with the girls.

Throughout the whole ordeal, Michelle ended up getting pregnant- again. Brianna is her youngest daughter and Michelle was terrified she would be taken away as well. She explained to the judge she was on birth control and the judge let her keep Brianna.

Ever since Brianna, life has been better for Michelle. Her and her husband are both working towards a degree and are living on their own.

As for her other kids, she'll get the chance to fight for her daughters back one last time next month.

Right as she finished up her story, the rest of the class walked back into the room and I couldn't remember when they had stepped out.

Even though I was shocked by her story, Michelle's openness put me at ease with the group. She trusted me enough to talk to me and I appreciated it.

Xaviera joked about Michelle's crazy life.

Susie and Xaviera then started talking about their lives and gave me a quick summary of why they were here. Susie repeated what she had told me before, "Mom was a bitch. I had to get out."

I laughed at her blunt attitude about it and she surprised me by turning the tables on me.

She asked me about my story. I told her it was pretty boring and nothing "bad" had happened to me. One girl got defensive and said the things that had happened to them weren't bad, just not what I considered normal.

"Oh, sorry," I said.

Susie asked me if my parents were together and I told her about their recent split. That's when she got all psych-y on me. She asked me how the situation made me feel. I gave her the sob story and she nodded.

To her, my story was nothing. To me, it was the most devastating thing that's ever happened.

She explained to me that most of them had come from broken homes so they don't know what it's like to come from a childhood with both parents living under the same roof. When I told her that it was different for me and how I was blindsided by the whole thing, she understood where I was coming from.

The bond these girls have is obvious. They've formed their own families without their blood relatives.

They each take care of each others kids and hang out outside of school. No, their lives aren't perfect or normal- but I guess what's normal is different for everyone.

Journal 2 and 3

In the past couple of weeks in Multi-Ethnic we've talked a bit about the importance of small ethnic publications.

Prof. Reisner suggested using these publications as a way of keeping connected with ethnic communites and discovering issues important to them.

News judgement is going to be different in a multi-ethnic paper and it's important to look at them because, like said in class, they are good resources. I agree with this. It's an inside look to what's going on in their "world." I guess that's not the best word to use coming out of a class like this.

To give us a closer look at multi-ethnic media, Professor Reisner invited the editor-in-chief and of the South Florida Times. I don't mean to offend, but he was a really boring speaker and no matter how hard I tried, my mind drifted to LaLa land.

From what I was mentally in the class for, he didn't say anything that resonated with me. The one interesting thing he did say was an answer to a student's question. Someone asked if reporters had to "be one to report on one?" To which he answered, "no."

That was the first time my ears perked up at something he said. It related to previous class discussions about being objective and subjective.

I've learned about this in my experience writing for student media. I've never dealt with racial issues but when covering student government or any other student association, it's been difficult learning how to keep my voice out of the articles.

We came to the conclusion that there is no such thing a complete objectivity. Our opinions will always come through in our work and the best we can do is show fairness.

We discussed the differences between African Americans and Caribbean blacks. I had no idea that Rastas were considered a negative image for Jamaicans. I admit to totally falling prey to thinking all Jamaicans were pot-smoking, yellow, red and green wearing people.

This discussion was the first time I felt comfortable looking at race in a different way. I didn't feel I was being offensive by asking questions about the differences between people. It was great to see how excited Reisner got during this discussion because his class had reached a point where there were no bars and everyone was participating.

One of my favorite discussions was of Cubans living in Miami who refuse to learn english. This has driven me crazy my whole life. Both my parents are Cuban and my grandparents only know how to say "hello" and "stupid gringo" in english. They have always reprimanded me for not speaking spanish well. If the constant nagging wasn't irritating enough, their reason for me learning spanish does me in. They tell me I live in Miami and should know spanish. Last time I checked Miami was a part of the United States, meaning we should speak english.

Cubans have this idea that one day they are going to move back to Cuba once Castro is not in power, so why adjust to the American life. I think it's time for those Cubans who have been living here for close to 50 years to realize they aren't going back.

Listening Post 1

On a chilly morning, I pulled myself together and set out on my first visit to Little Havana Out-of-School Youth Program.

The chilly temperature that morning turned out to be an indicator of the reception I was to receive from the students I'd be interviewing.

The gloomy parking garage and creaking elevator scared me and I had to take a few moments to think about what I was getting myself into. There was no way any of these kids from the "street" were going to talk to me. Even when trying my hardest I still looked like a cookie cutter prep school kid.

I rehearsed what I was to say when it was time to walk in, but the woman who had helped me coordinate the interviews abruptly broke my concentration when she flung the office door open.

"Hi!" I yelped.

The woman recognized my voice from our earlier phone conversations and introduced herself. She took one look at me and asked again why I was doing this. I explained the assignment and how these kids were nothing like me and I just wanted to know about them. She turned away and mumbled under her breath, "They're just a bunch of low-lives."

This wasn't the thing I wanted to hear. It made my nerves worse. If the woman working to better their lives couldn't believe in them, how was I supposed to see past their dirt?

I followed the woman into a small conference room. Along the narrow corridor, posters promoting safe sex were taped on the walls.

I second guess myself. Before I have the chance to turn away, I'm thrown into the room.

I blurted out what I had rehearsed in the car - "Hey, I'm Adriana. I've chosen to write a story on you because I think you're a community that is entirely misrepresented and I want to give you a chance to be heard!" Optimism had obviously taken over me because my little speech didn't work and looking back now-how could I think it would? The group of four girls and two guys stared at me blankly. I took a deep breath and could feel the sweat on my skin. I turned around to acknowledge the teacher and woman who had walked me in but they had left me on my own.

I take another shot at explaining why I'm visiting the program. They look around at each other and I apologize for the awkwardness I'm causing.

I turn to the oldest looking member of the group- a girl I thought was about 21 who turned out to be 25- and asked her, "What are you doing here?" She shoots one eyebrow up and says, "I'm getting my GED."

I felt the students get restless and look at me like a scientist performing an experiment. They had zero tolerance for my questions. They wanted to know why I was there and they wanted to know now. If I didn't suck it up and just talk to them, I would go nowhere.

"Okay. But, what are you working towards? What has your experience been like?"

She smiled at me and it made me feel naive.

She explained that her experience at the program has been nothing short of a rollercoaster ride. It has taken her five years just to complete her high-school education and at the moment she's working on getting her Associate's. I reckon that's enough information for right now.

I move on to the next guy. A tall, tan guy about my age. I figure I could forget integrity for the moment and win him over with my girlish charm. I ask him about his experience and with an earnest smile look into his eyes for an answer. He gets up and walks out of the room. The other students didn't even notice he walked out on me since they had begun conversations with each other. I called out, "That's cool. I'll talk to you later. Thanks!" I knew he wouldn't be back.

I learn the other girl's name- Suchail. She's 25 and says her reason for dropping out of high school was simple. "Mom was a bitch. I needed to get out so I dropped out."

I nod my head. She looks at me and smiles, "you're not going to find anything interesting here."

I'm shocked when I look at the clock and realize that it's time for the group to head out. Most of them didn't even realize I was still sitting there as they get up to leave for the day. I hadn't realized the whole ordeal had taken me an hour. I asked if it was okay to come back another time and two girls just looked up at me, shocked I was still in the room and Suchail said, "We'll be here. More of us too."

As we made our way out into the main hall, one of the other girls, Xaviera- a 21-year-old with two daughters- explains to me that not everyone drops out because of drugs or teen pregnancy but it's more a result of an unstable family. They don't have good examples at home yet they get the blame for being drop outs. With that quick rant, she whips around the door. She waved goodbye and poked fun of me. She promised next time they'd be ready to talk to me but I needed to relax. I nodded my head and waved back.

So, until next time.

First Blog

Good evening blogosphere,

In JOU3188 this past week, the notion of race was thrust once again into my brain. I hate the idea of race. I think of myself as more of a "class-ist." I know that sounds ridiculous and snobby and you probably want to smack me upside the head with a book, but it's the truth. I am more likely to judge a person by the way they dress and look more than I would by their skin color. It is all a part of my yuppety private school upbringing. I blame my mother, she's the one who insisted on me going to an all girls Catholic school. I, in no way, condone this behavior. But, I am just aware of it. In fact, it is the thing I dislike the most about myself. If I cross paths with a black man wearing RocaWear in an isolated area, I am much more likely to be seen clutching my purse than I would be if that same black man was wearing Banana Republic or J.Crew. Then again I can see how one could argue that those are "white man" brands.

I like to view someone's race as nothing more than an interesting tidbit about a person's story. That's all.

Unfortunately, my mindset on how I looked at race was kind of crushed about half an hour ago when I took the Harvard Implicit test. I had taken one before for a sociology of gender class a couple of semeters ago and I remember right after the exam how the results felt just as surprising and unsettling. According to the test, I had a strong inclination to light-skinned people. At first, I was accepting of it. After all it's just a computer operated test and there has to be some glitches along the way. All I was doing was pressing the "i" and "e" keys.

Then I began to think of everyone that I hang out with. None of my friends were black, not even acquaintances. I always pride myself on not being bigotted and racist, but subconsciously, I was siding with the white face people. It made me think of the differences between prejudice and race. A little off topic, but still relevant. I know myself and I would never be prejudice against someone, but I was capable of being hesistant towards them because they weren't my "kind."

The same thing happened when we appointed positions to different races and genders in our class assignment. Everytime, I found myself wanting to give the white male or female the top position because I found them to be the most trustworthy. I am of Hispanic origin, but have never fully identified myself with the Cuban culture. I live in a very Americanized Cuban household where Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts coffee quickly replaced Pilon and you wouldn't be caught dead watching Telemundo or Unrrivision. We're not ashamed of where we came from, not at all. We just have a tendency to look at the picturesque Hampton's-loving Kennedy kind of lifestyle for guidance- we just don't have that kind of money.

I've never watched Barbershop before last class. From the bits and pieces I saw, I understood what Reisner was getting at. As a writer, we want to paint a picture for our audiences. Bring words to life and show them what and why we're writing about this particular subject. I could appreciate the small family owned Barbershop more once the film showed the inner workings of all its key and supporting players. The present owner who is forced to live up to his father's legacy and is failing miserably. The ex-felon who's just trying to make a life for himself and the only way he can figure out how to do so is by stealing from others. The outcasted senior who no one can seem to take seriously, even though every thing he says is full of a certain kind of unique wisdom.

That's what we're supposed to pluck out when we do our Listening Posts or any other kind of story we're assigned. In order to get the full message, we need to pull apart the exterior to reveal the truth of what lies in these communities. Like Prof. Reisner says, they're not just food, festivals and fun.