YouthCreate Photo Project

When I first came to the United States, I always got lost and was not familiar with people. This is because of language barriers and me not knowing any English.

The biggest struggle that I have in U.S. is that I don’t speak English, because of it, it is less convenient to do things and less people that I can talk to or hangout with. And I miss my home and family back in China.

Back in Malaysia, I was forced to pay a lot of taxes. It was pretty much stealing. Because of this, it was hard to live there.

I don’t know a lot of things, but we have hands and feet so we can work hard.

Basketball and sports have always been important to me. To see somebody in NBA that looks like me is very inspiring. I grew up watching a lot people that don’t look like me playing basketball.

Everyone should study well. It is hard to find work without an education, especially with language. When I first came to the U.S. two years ago, I did not know any English. Because of this, I struggled with finding work. Fortunately, I have work now, but I always avoid using English. It is hard and it makes me uncomfortable. I would stay in my comfort zone and use Chinese whenever I can.

When 9/11 happened, I lost my first job, which I was working as a designer in a Jewish company, so I bought the tailor shop at Wollaston. At first, I didn’t earn much money through making clothes; I barely had enough money after I paid my rent. However, my business got better each year. It’s been 15 years now, I am very successful on this job. You must have a goal and work for it. When you are doing a business, you care about the costumer, not the money. I treat my costumers like friends. When my husband passed away, I was hopeless and wanted to close my shop permanently. Thankfully, my costumers kept supporting me and I really appreciate it. They helped me walk out of sadness and start over again. I love my job and I think everyone should choose the job they love.

As an ABC [American-Born Chinese], when people in this country look at you they don’t know if you’re ABC or if you’re an immigrant. They really don’t know how to treat you in their mind because they have a fleeting instinct when they see you, these are your immutable characteristics -meaning characteristics that you can’t change. An Asian face is an immutable characteristic. They immediately create an image in their mind of who you are as a person. And until you open your mouth, and they hear that you don’t have an accent, their image is something different than what might be real. It’s always a challenge to meet someone from the majority culture, and break through the stereotypes of the pre-conceived notions that they already have on an Asian person. Once you do that, you can tell they that the stress in them reduces because they know that you can at least communicate with them, find common ground. The whole key to life is to find common ground with other people; once you’re able to do that you can be successful but that’s always the initial challenge.

I used to be a troublemaker back then, and I didn’t listen to my mom, she would tell me to wash the dishes and I wouldn’t listen to her, but after coming here you learn to respect people that are older than you, respect your master, respect authority, respect the police and stuff so you don’t want to cause trouble.