New York 30

Listen to New York 30, a 19-year-old woman from East Harlem and Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 19

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 02/05/1995

PLACE OF BIRTH: Brooklyn, New York City

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Cherokee/Black/Jamaican

OCCUPATION: unemployed

EDUCATION: high school graduate

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject has never lived outside New York City.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject was born and raised until age 9 in the Roosevelt Projects in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood (a.k.a. Bed-Stuy) in Brooklyn, New York. She lived in Queens at age 10 and then, at age 11, moved to East Harlem, where she was still living at the time of this interview.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: David Nevell

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/10/2013

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

If you go on Facebook, which is teens — it don’t even matter if you’re probably 20 or up — if you’re on Facebook, you’re literally on “teen news.” And, um, they’ll do things in the summer times, or, like, during, like, holidays they’ll write “Brooklyn, Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx.” Like, they’ll put them into one, like, picture, and they’ll be like, OK, so, they’ll talk about like fashion wear. OK, so, Harlem wears Gucci belts; Queens will wear Fendi belt. No, Harlem will wear a Louis belt, um, Queens will wear, uh, Fendi belt, Bronx will wear a Bebe belt, and Brooklyn will wear a string. That’s what they say. And then they’ll do phones. Harlem has a Iphone, the Bronx has a Galaxy, Queens have some, um, new HTC Android or something, and then Brooklyn will have a payphone. I mean, I don’t really take offense to it, because it’s like, I grew out of that, but, um, I am from Brooklyn, and I feel like the way people view things are still, like, old-fashioned, like, “Oh, this is how Brooklyn will be forever.” But you can’t really think that because Harlem’s changed and no one really thinks about all the other, um, places because, um, they don’t have, like, spots where people, like, like tourists will want to go to, other people will want to go to. When you think of Brooklyn, you’re like “Oh, a hood place where a lot of, um, bad intentions are, you know, situated.” No. Brooklyn is like any other place, like Harlem, except they’re less competitive; they have less, um, people coming to sight and stuff, but everything is the same. The lifestyle’s the same: Everyone’s just trying to make ends meet, everywhere, so. It’s just that, um, maybe the swag and maybe the way, way of life’s just a little bit different, but at the end of the day everyone’s still trying to make ends meet. Like, Harlem will go out and spend all their rent money on outfits, but Brooklyn will pay their rent and keep their money in their pocket but spend it all on drugs, maybe, so, that’s how you have to think of it. They’re more competitive; they want to be, like, out there, up there. Queens: It’s starting to be like Harlem, to me. A lot of Queens girls, they want to make sure they look like Nicki Minaj and very fancy and uppity to, um, fit in and not be judged by society and stuff, so…

No, I’m currently unemployed. An arsonist, a drunk arsonist, burned half my, um, owner’s store down. I was a children’s host for parties, Spanish speaking or English speaking. Um, if there was Spanish speaking, I would wear the costume, and it was dreadful! I was a Elmo for, um, a Mexican party; I was Elmo, and I was like, probably the shortest Elmo ever. It was hot; I had to stay in there for two hours, and it was so hot and sweaty that sweat kept going in my eyes.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Shawnia Keith (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 20/06/2014

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: N/A

COMMENTARY BY: N/A

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

The archive provides:

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