not model minority
“There were plenty of common themes among the girls in the crew: immigrant families who worked hard, fathers who drank too much alcohol, mothers who yelled, and siblings who were kind of annoying. With one another, we took turns expressing our self-determination and bitching about restrictions on our liberty. Our lives were no 90210. In fact, most of us had barely ever left New York since arriving from the places where we had been born. Some had never left Queens. Raised in a close, collectivist culture, we cared about our families but felt that they didn’t get us.
I was an illegal immigrant.
My family’s apartment was a tiny one-bedroom in one of the apartment buildings in Jamaica, at the intersection of 89th Avenue, near Mary Immaculate Hospital before it closed down. I shared a bunk bed with my brother and sister while my parents slept on a couch in the living room. I never told anyone that my mother and father had spent a day and night cleaning that apartment and killing dozens of mice while my siblings and I stayed with my aunt and uncle a few blocks away.
We were not model minority members. Instead of going to class, doing homework and planning for futures in science and engineering and/or childrearing, we filled our brains with the sounds of Method Man, Onyx, TLC, Shabba Ranks and the number for the local Chinese restaurant that delivered. Sometimes we jumped turnstiles to get onto the subway and used our school transit cards to get onto the Q112 bus, far, far away from school and the places we knew. Pretty daring for a group of Indian girls who were raised to be “good girls” and to do as they were told. We found ourselves hanging out in Jamaica, Brooklyn and once or twice, we took the train to Jackson Heights where plenty of East Indians lived, exchanging smiles with each other as passengers boarded for school and work and we made our way to the next adventure.”
-Queens Girls: Indo-Caribbean Life in ‘90s New York, Odessa Devi Despot
Full article here: https://browngirlmagazine.com/queens-girl-indo-caribbean-life-in-90s-new-york-the-fight/