All posts by Chelsea Batista

Jamaican and Proud!

Raven Lemon’s Interview as Told by Chelsea Batista

Raven Lemon

Kicking it in Kingston

I was born in Kingston. And I lived in Saint Catherine. I lived with my aunt, because my mom worked all the time and my dad already lived in the US. My aunts were very religious. I lived in a two bedroom house. It was very nice considering what bad parts of Jamaica were like. It was roomy and clean and I was the only child that lived there. My aunts had kids, but I’m literally the baby of everyone in the family. I have a cousin that’s one year older than me, but she lived with her dad. So, she was not around a lot unless she was visiting my aunt. And my other cousins’ children would come over on some weekends, but I basically lived alone with the adults. It was quiet sometimes, but it was nice.

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Even Our Elders Help Their Elders

Even Our Elders Help Their Elders

*All names besides the interviewee’s have been changed for privacy reasons*

*Interviewee’s quotes have been translated from Spanish to English*

 

Some would think that once a woman is passed the age of 65, she should be laying back in her house, retired and living off her pension. However, for those like Luisa Figueroa, that isn’t necessarily an option. All the same, Mrs. Figueroa says, “Even if I could quit my job, I wouldn’t. I’d die faster doing nothing than I would doing something. And I like keeping myself occupied.”

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Dominican-Raised, Brooklyn-Born Woman

My family is very large in total, but the vast majority of it is on my mother’s side. And the vast majority of that consists of women. The oldest relative I have ever known is my great-grandmother from my mother’s side, the matriarch of our family. In a small campo outside of the capital of the Dominican Republic, she had ten children, eight daughters and two sons, all of which are living in the US today. Most of these children, my grandmother, and most of my great-aunts and great-uncles, got married and had children. Some of them back in DR, some of them here. Continue reading Dominican-Raised, Brooklyn-Born Woman