An Immigrant’s Tale: From The Tropical Island of Montserrat to Blustery Boston and Beyond

00:00:12
Speaker 1: And we return to Our American Stories. Up next, a story from our True Diversity series, sponsored by the great folks at Philanthropy Roundtable, America’s leading advocate for your freedom to support the causes you believe in. Their True Diversity initiative encourages Americans to embrace all the qualities that make us unique individuals, because there’s so much more to each of our stories than what’s defined by a group, identity, or other superficial traits. Today we meet a partner of their campaign, Patrice On Wuka. Take it away.

00:00:46
Speaker 2: Patrese, my story starts back in the Caribbean. I was born in the tiny Alan call Mansarrat. For the most part, most people work in some shape or form in a way that is connected to the government. And even more difficult for people is that if you are not connected, if you are not wealthy already, the likelihood of your children being able to go to college, go to graduate school, really achieve beyond what you yourself as an adult is doing now, it’s very small. And my parents, they were not connected, they were not wealthy, and they recognized that, you know, for us, their children to be able to achieve greater things, it was not going to happen in this tiny, parochial island of Mansarra. That’s why they decided to move to the United States, where there would be so much more opportunity for them. So they filed for us to come to this country, and my parents went through the entire legal process. It was expensive; it was very long years. It took years to get through, but they did it. And to do it, they sold our home; they sold the cars. We had two cars at the time, and you know, they left a pretty decent, middle-class lifestyle.

00:02:11
Speaker 3: They weren’t rich, but we…

00:02:13
Speaker 2: had a split-level home overlooking the water, which, you know, on an island, is pretty easy, but still beautiful, gorgeous views to working people. And they traded all of that. There was not necessarily parody between the currency in our island and the U.S. dollars, so obviously, our money back then didn’t go very far, and they ended up selling everything and moving to the United States with just about five suitcases of clothes and not a lot of money to start over, literally, from scratch. And I think to myself, why in the world would they do this? It wasn’t like we moved to Florida, to Miami. We moved to Boston, Massachusetts. We lived indoor Chester, and you’re leaving temperatures of 70 degrees in sunny with a cool ocean breeze every single day to move to cold, icy, snowy Boston, where the familiarity, all of the things you know, the people you know, you know, are left behind, all of the culture, the experiences that you’re accustomed to. The smells: I mean, waking up and smelling mangoes from the tree outside; seeing kids playing on the streets well into the evening time; driving on a Saturday to go get a hot, freshly baked loaf of bread with cheese; and watching the sandal guy make slippers across the way while you’re under a tamerin tree, enjoying life, going by very slowly and calmly. To Boston. And not a van in Boston, not Beacon Hill in Boston, not Copply—you know, it’s Dorchester. And this was in 1985. We moved to Boston. This was during the height of the drug epidemic, and so it was like going from your coloring book page where it’s full of reds and greens and blues and purples and yellows, and you flip the page, and it’s all gray. It’s all shades of gray and black and somber. The joy of familiarity has been replaced by the uncertainty of the unknown. And my parents, you know, they found a little apartment. It was in a two—I guess it’s a three-story house. It was the top attic apartment. It had two bedrooms, one window in the front and a back door, so it was, it was tiny, very hot in the summertime because there was no A/C. You know, we went to the lawn mat to wash our clothes, but in between that, we had to wash things by hand.

00:05:05
Speaker 3: So my father was a laborer.

00:05:07
Speaker 2: He worked to for construction companies at the time, and he would leave in the wee, dark hours of the morning and come back late into the evening, and he would be caked, caked in mud. And still, my mom, who was, you know, an entry-level accountant, she would come home, exhausted, understandably, cook a fresh pot of dinner, usually rice and chicken, make sure my brother and I had done our schoolwork and our homework, put us to bed, and then head right to the bathroom where she would take my father’s genes, his work clothes, and fill up the tub and start washing the caked mud out of his genes. She’d be hunched over the tiny tub on her knees, well into the dark night, scrubbing those genes by hand. And I, and sat once in a while, and I would wake up just to use the bathroom, and I would see her there. I remember that those images, and it’s like seared into my memory. It’s so vivid that I could just see her tired. Just the veins on her hands, you know, burgeoning as she’s scrubbing with soap, you know, my dad’s genes. I mean, that I learned quickly and early that that is love, that that is sacrifice, that that is hard work, but that you, as a parent, in a spouse, you will do everything and anything to ensure that your family is taken care of and has what each member needs. And my dad needed clean clothes, and my mom would do that, and then she’d go to bed and wake up early and start the process all over again. And, you know, that is part of the hardness of America, because my parents came to this country thinking that the streets were paved with gold. I mean, that is, that’s, that’s the mantra overseas: everything is greater in America. When, when people come back home to visit, they come with money, they have their gold jewelry, they’re flashy. They talk about how great things are, and I’m sure things are better for them, but they don’t always talk about the challenges, the hardness, the difficulties of assimilation, the difficulties of learning how to make your own way in a country that, you know, it prides itself on individualism and community—certainly community when it comes to the church, and it comes to philanthropy and charity—but there’s an element of just, you figure it out on your own, and that was part of the hardness and the difficulty of transitioning, you know. Part of also the challenge is just the environment. Rampant drug dealing and violence associated with it spilled over from the groups of kids on the corner to the kids who were just going about their day. And I remember a young woman—I believe her name was Tiffany Smith—she was killed just, what, a block or two from our home. She was on a mailbox, sitting on the mailbox. Probably shouldn’t have been out late at night, but she was shot and killed. And that was a wake-up call in the entire city to recognize that the street violence had to be addressed. But again, my parents will tell you that despite the challenges, the hardship, the difficulties of living in America, it was worth it.

00:08:44
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Patrice On Wuka share her family’s story, her assimilation to America from the small island in the Caribbean, Montserrat, and finding themselves not in Miami, not even North or South Carolina, but, no, Boston—icy coal Boston—and Dorchester, a tough suburb outside of Boston, where they had to make do and make their way in a new country—no familiarity, the toughness of the weather, the culture. I love that she pointed out the smells. My grandfather had come from Sicily and had the same things to tell me. When we come back, more of our True Diversity series with Patrice On Wucah here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories and with Patrice On Wucah’s story. As part of our True Diversity series, we return to Patrice on her immigrant parents buying their first home in America when she was in the fourth grade.

00:09:57
Speaker 2: Buying your first home is a huge deal, especially when you’ve come to this country with so little, where you have, where you have worked menial jobs, worked overtime, given up time with your family just to ensure that you could put a meal on the table every day, shoes on the kids’ feet. And my parents somehow working in jobs that collectively paid them less than my first job in D.C.—as in, my job. My first job in D.C. paid very little because I worked for a nonprofit, but I still made more in that first job than my parents made together when I was growing up. But despite that, they saved and saved for a down payment for a home, and it was a home, miles—at least 45 minutes—away on the very outskirts of the city of Boston, still within city limits, but in a neighborhood where for the first time they could breathe a sigh of relief. They weren’t worried about us getting shot or killed, my brother getting recruited to a gang. It was far, and that meant that when there was a school by strike, I would have to take the public transport rather than the school bus to school, and that was nerve-racking for my mom because I was eight years old, a little girl, and my parents had to work. And so, two choices: Patrese stays at home for the, however long, the school by strike would be, and it ended up being for months on end, or Patrese learns to take the transit, public transit, by herself. And that was a commute of two bus rides, about 15 to 20 minutes each, as well as a 30-minute training ride in between, a very long trip. And my parents said, “You know what, her education is too important.” And so the first day of the school by strike, my mom, she figured out the route. We took the bus, we took the train, we took another bus, we got off at my school stop, and she said, “This is how you do it every day,” and she would join me in the morning and then go to work. And in the afternoon, I was 100 percent on my own to do the same route going home. And even in my fourth grade, eight- or nine-year-old heart, I knew I could do it.

00:12:35
Speaker 3: I wasn’t scared one bit.

00:12:37
Speaker 2: It was nerve-racking, and I should have been scared considering some of the things that I saw.

00:12:42
Speaker 3: I mean, even though I…

00:12:44
Speaker 2: was tall for my age, all I remember were just legs; people were walking like trees because they were so much bigger than me.

00:12:52
Speaker 3: But imagine seeing a…

000:12:53
Speaker 2: little girl with two long braids and a backpack on her back and a little purse on her shoulder, navigating through the legs of grown adults, going to school and coming home every day. And I did it for months on end until that school by strike finally came to an end, because again, our education was paramount. And even, and I learned at that age that I had to be willing to make a sacrifice for my education, for what was important. And I did it, and every day my parents came home, they knew that I called my mom when I got home to let her know. I let myself in.

00:13:31
Speaker 3: And I was safe.

00:13:34
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, I look back and look at the kids who took the other choice—who did not take the bus, or did not find someone else to carpool with—who literally stayed home for most of this school year. They ended up getting left behind and had to repeat their education at that grade level. It’s just a reminder that the sacrifices are worth it. And so it taught me at an early level or early age, just to prize my education, to work hard. And there were blessings. I call them blessings, even in the midst of that. I remember for…

00:14:14
Speaker 3: about a week on a stretch, every…

00:14:17
Speaker 2: afternoon when I got on at the first bus, there would be a dollar in my chair, or a dollar in the spot where I would usually sit, and I don’t know where that dollar came from. I would look around, there was no one there, so I would just take that dollar up and put it in my little purse.

00:14:32
Speaker 3: And it happened one day.

00:14:34
Speaker 2: Then it happened the next day. Then it happened the next day. I truly believe that someone saw a little girl getting on the public transit bus every day to go home from school and said, “Boy, let me do something good for her.” And I will never know who that person is. Maybe you’re listening.

00:14:55
Speaker 3: I don’t know. Thank you if you are. I taught me a lot about private charity. But my education…

00:15:03
Speaker 2: I went to Boston Latin School for high school, went on to Tufts University, where I studied economics and potal political science, and for the first time really understood why I had such a passion for politics. And I loved the economy and loved understanding how the micro-decisions that people make as consumers, as business owners, really impacts the larger economy and how the government’s decisions impact the little person, the small business owner, and the individual.

00:15:37
Speaker 3: And I decided that that is what I really wanted to go into, you know.

00:15:41
Speaker 2: And one of the things that we did very regularly is that my parents would watch television programs at night, specifically PBS. They loved the McLaughlin Group, and over the years, even after we moved out of that apartment and moved into our first home, there was never a week that political commentary shows were not on our television screen.

00:16:04
Speaker 3: And I hated it. I will be honest. I thought they were boring, they were annoying.

00:16:10
Speaker 2: I wanted to watch cartoons or I wanted to watch something where people were laughing. Instead, I would see people yelling back and forth or talking about foreign policy, talking about the economy, things that to me at a tender age were just as foreign as, you know, speaking to someone from another country in another language. So the irony is that I would become one of those talking heads on television. And it hit me, that moment, where, you know, you finally made it to a place you never thought you would be, when your mom calls you and says, “I was getting ready for church on a Sunday morning, and I hear my daughter’s voice.” And I live in Washington, D.C., and she’s in Boston, and she’s looking around, and next thing you know, she looks up and sees me on television on a PBS Sunday morning show talking about policy, and she said, “I was overjoyed.”

00:17:12
Speaker 3: I had not told her I was going to be on the show. In fact, I’ve forgotten. You know…

00:17:15
Speaker 2: I started getting into the television commentary circuit on a regular basis, and I very much am.

00:17:22
Speaker 3: But to me, it was not a big deal.

00:17:24
Speaker 2: But to her—to her—it meant the world. Because the little girl who she thought wasn’t paying attention to the McLaughlin Group or to all of the commentary shows that we would watch and my parents would watch and debate politics. She never knew that I was taking notes, and in my little heart, a desire to be able to become one of those voices and be representative of the viewpoints that she holds. She never imagined that being part of my destiny. Only in America is something like that possible. You know, here you are, you’ve got here, I am.

00:18:04
Speaker 3: I’m a woman.

00:18:05
Speaker 2: I’m an immigrant; I’m a proud, naturalized American citizen. I believe in independence and freedom and autonomy.

00:18:15
Speaker 3: I am so many things.

00:18:17
Speaker 2: Wrapped up in one ball of passion and purpose and energy. And sometimes people don’t know what to do with me when they assume that I’m going to think a certain way or view a particular issue from one viewpoint because of my gender, or because of my ethnicity, or because of my race.

00:18:36
Speaker 3: And I surprise them, and I’m happy to do that.

00:18:40
Speaker 2: And my gender should not dictate how I view life. My race does not dictate my worldview.

00:18:47
Speaker 3: We should be…

00:18:47
Speaker 2: treated as individuals who bring different perspectives, different backgrounds, different lived experiences to the table and treated as such. When we start labeling people and limiting them based just on the superficial outward categories, we miss the richness, the textures, the uniqueness that makes every person an individual.

00:19:15
Speaker 1: And a special thanks to Patrice On Wuko for sharing her story. Her story has been a part of our True Diversity series, sponsored by Philanthropy Roundtable. Learn more at TrueDiversity.org. And Patrese’s story is a story of millions of immigrants who come here to improve their lives. What a moment it must have been for Patrese’s mom to look at that television and see her daughter on it. Years before Patrese was being forced to watch the McLaughlin Group by her parents, those same parents, and there she was now on the television giving her opinions. And by the way, I loved what she said. “I am proud to be a naturalized American citizen,” she said. My Italian grandparents and my Lebanese grandparents told me the same thing. And when that flag was flying in front of both of their homes, it meant something to them. The story of Patrese On WUKA, part of our True Diversity series, here on Our American Stories.