Interview

From The Peopling of New York City

Interview with Anne
Sofya: please introduce yourself

Anne: My name is Anne Korostyshevskaya

Sofya: Very nice to meet you. So how long have you lived in Coney Island?
Anne: I live in USA for almost 15 years and to Coney Island we moved in 1997 in autumn – so it will be 11 years soon.
S: Why did you decide to move?
A: Coney Island?
S: I mean in general to USA
A: We decided to move here since our granddaughter wanted to go to school here and we figured that it would be nice to live in US. And since we got that opportunity, we moved.
S: Did you move from Russia?
A: Yes, we moved from Moscow. I was born in USSR in Ukraine. But we lived in Moscow for many years so we moved here from Moscow.
S: How do you think Coney Island has changed in the last 10 years?
A: It changed, for the better. It became much more peaceful, secure. They build a stadium recently, and people started coming here. People that live here changed too. I think there is much more intelligent people that before, very nice people.
S: Did your whole family move here?
A: Yes, our entire family: me, my husband, my daughter and my granddaughter. And now we got an addition to our family – my great granddaughter was born and she is already 8 years old.
S: Where does the rest of your family live?
A: Everyone lives in New York, but in a different borough.
S: Do they visit you often?
A: Well, they visit me when they can since they are very busy, work, school. Sometimes we visit them. Whenever it is possible.

S: What other languages do you speak?
A: I know Russian and speak a little English. With everyone in this house we speak Russian of course. My great-granddaughter is in second grade now, she doesn’t speak Russian much, but she is able to. We talk to her in Russian at home but she always tries to speak English to us.
S: So her children will definitely speak English then?
A: Yes, her kids will definitely only speak English. Then again, we are trying to preserve Russian in our family. Our great-granddaughter can read, she has Russian books, since we are trying to preserve the language. I don’t know if we will manage to but, well, time will show.

S: Back to Coney Island for now, Why did you choose Coney Island as a place to live in?
A: we didn’t really decide. We lived in Bensonhurst before this and rented an apartment for full rent, but then we got this subsidized housing apartment with reduced renting costs. This is the reason we moved. We liked this house; it is situated right next to the ocean so we agreed to take it. There is fresh air here; we can go to the ocean any time we want so we don’t regret moving here. It is very nice.
S: Do you socialize often with other Russians in this area?
A: Well, I wouldn’t say we often socialize in huge company, but we often talk to our neighbors that we love and that are very friendly with us. We celebrate birthdays and other holidays with the people we got acquainted with from this house. We don’t have relatives close, but we have close friends, but they live in a different city.
S: Did you have any problems with people from other nationalities?
A: never, we think Americans are very friendly and nice. For example if we need information, they are always very agreeable to give it to us, like how to get somewhere. They are very polite and sometimes even lead us to the place we need to get to.

S: Very nice, and do you keep correspondence with Russia?

A: Yes, we have some friends left there, and those people are already pretty old so slowly we are loosing our friends in Russia, that’s why we have less and less people we can keep communicating with, but the ones we have, we talk to on the phone. We don’t go to Russia. In fact, we haven’t been to Russia since we came here. If someone comes from Russia we talk to them of course, but in other cases its always the telephone.
S: Are you used to America? Do you consider yourself an American now?
A: Well, I can’t really consider myself American although I have citizenship, however since I don’t know the language well enough, it makes communicating with other people more challenging. I think we are already “acclimatized” to America, meaning we are already If we knew the language better, it would have been the best. We are very grateful to USA. We got everything we could possibly dream of while we lived here. Since we moved here when we were already pretty old, we never got a job and yet we get everything we need for life. The young people of our family are pretty successful now, our granddaughter moved here as a doctor, passed all her examinations, tests and now she works here as a doctor and is very happy.
For everything America gave us we are very grateful, we are very happy we moved here

S: A few more questions. Do you vote for any president?
A: We going to vote, we didn’t vote yet since when Bush was elected eight years ago we didn’t have our citizenship. Later on we voted after that. Now we also going to vote in this upcoming election, but I won’t say for whom, since it’s a secret for now.
S: Do you prefer the democrats or republicans?
A: We are registered as Democratic but we aren’t sure yet who we are going to vote for.
S: What places do you visit here in coney island?
A: Since we are pretty old now and our health doesn’t let us walk much, we don’t walk as much as we want to. We go to the Jewish center that is located not so far from here. A few years ago we used to travel to Manhattan, visit Carnegie Hall. Now its physically impossible for us. We spend our time here now, in the house.

S: In the beginning when you just moved to US, was it very hard to adjust?
A: Yes, immigration is a very hard period in life, not counting world war II, that we lived through, me and my husband. Our daughter was born after the war. So if we don’t count the war, which of course cannot be compared to anything in this world because of how difficult it is to live through it, then immigration is the second hardest period in our lives. Physically, its hard to get rid of everything we earned during our life and start over from scratch. First years were hard morally and physically. We didn’t work since we were already too old for it, but slowly we adjusted and now we have everything we need and its much easier now. We sometimes feel nostalgic about the people we left behind.
S: Do you regret not visiting Russia?
A: No, because we have no relatives there, hardly any friends. We aren’t planning to go there either.
S: Do you every go abroad?
A: No, but we would like to. Its not physically possible anymore for us though. We wish we could go to Israel but we don’t have such an opportunity.
S: That’s it, thank you.
A: always glad to help.

~*Thank you for reading!*~