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Dominicans in Sunnyside and Woodside
Randy Jimenez and Pete Dzierzynski
Preface
Over nearly twenty years, we, Pete
Dzierzynski and Randy Jimenez, have lived in the community made up of
Sunnyside and Woodside in southwestern Queens. Although we grew up no
more than thirty minutes away from each other, our environments were very
different. Pete grew up as a Caucasian living in a mixed community of
Arabs, Caucasians, and Hispanics. Randy grew up as the child of Dominican
immigrants in a community made up almost entirely of Dominicans. The work
presented in this paper is the product of both almost twenty years of
direct observation from various perspectives as well as three weeks of
rigorous research. It is a survey of the speaking of languages other than
English in this community, with a focus on the Spanish-speaking Dominican
community.
Introduction
According to the New York City Department of
City Planning's analysis of immigration to New York City in the early
nineties, The Newest New Yorkers 1990 - 1994 (see The Newest New Yorkers
1990 - 1994, Executive Summary), the Dominican Republic was the top source
of immigrants to New York City in the 1970s and 1980s, maintaining that
position in the early 1990s. During the period from 1990 to 1994,
immigrants from this Caribbean nation accounted for one in five
immigrants, an increase of 52 percent over the annual average in the
1980s. When most people think of high concentrations of Dominican
immigrants and their children they usually think of such neighborhoods as
Washington Heights in Manhattan, Corona in Queens, or certain parts of the
Bronx. They rarely think of the southwestern Queens neighborhoods of
Woodside and Sunnyside, just east of Long Island City and south Astoria.
Sunnyside and Woodside gained notoriety during the Great Depression when
over half of the original tenants, mostly of Irish descent, were evicted
because they weren't able to afford their mortgages. This left the
neighborhoods open to immigrants from all over the world, and from the
seventies on, open to a large influx of Hispanic immigrants. Sunnyside,
zip code 11104, and Woodside, zip code 11377, extend from roughly from
39th street to 74th street. Although these neighborhoods have a great
population of Dominicans, 1st generation and later, it is also home to
several other immigrant groups, providing for an interesting blend of
culture and language.
The Dominican population in Woodside is very
centralized, focused almost entirely within three square blocks of
identical apartment buildings. These buildings, owned and operated by
Cosmopolitan Associates, Inc., are located on the blocks of 46th and 47th
Streets between 48th and 47th Avenues, 48th and 49th Streets between 47th
and 46th Avenues, and 64th and 65th Streets between 39th Avenue and
Broadway. These six-story buildings are identical and collectively
surround grassy gardens and courtyards. According to residents and
employees of Cosmopolitan Associates, an estimated 95% of the residents in
these buildings are Dominican. Dominicans do live in other residences in
Woodside, but the vast majority live in these buildings.
This social unity among the Dominican
community is also evident simply by walking the streets. One is likely to
see friends hanging out on a street corner, people walking down the
street, or young children with their parents, all speaking Spanish. The
Dominicans in Woodside are more comfortable speaking Spanish among each
other, just as many other highly concentrated ethnic groups are. This
level of familiarity is evidence of a strong ethnic solidarity.
Commerical
The Dominican community in Woodside is very
well represented in commerce. There are many different Spanish newspapers
sold in the stores and newsstands. "El Diario", the most popular Spanish
newspaper of American origin, is sold in most newsstands. Newspapers
imported from the Dominican Republic, such as "El Listin Diario", "El
Sol", "El Nacional", and "El Tiempo", are also available. There are
newspapers in a variety of other languages, but we were unable to tell
what the names of these publications were, because they were printed in
languages like Chinese and Korean. Their presence, however, shows that
non-English-speaking communities other than Dominicans have enough of a
presence to warrant the sale of newspapers in their languages.
There are a number of Dominican restaurants in Woodside, such as several
simply called Dominican Restaurant, and others like Reyes Restuarante and
Luisito Bar Restaurant. Several other restaurants, while not Hispanic
owned restaurants per se, bear the influence by the Dominican community,
as well as the other Spanish-speaking populations. Most restaurants, such
as McDonald's, hire employees who can take orders in Spanish. Most of
these establishments, however, are very small, with nothing fancier than a
plastic tarp awning. Some of the fancier restaurants, such as Side Tracks
Restaurant Bar and New York Style Eats, make no claims of catering to any
non-English-speaking communities, Dominican or otherwise. There are
several establishments for other ethnic groups in the neighborhood, such
as a couple of Mexican and Colombian restaurants, a few pubs like
McGuinness's which serve the local Irish-American community, and like
everywhere else in the city, there is a Chinese restaurant on every other
block.
There are also several grocery stores that cater to the Dominican
community, such as Smoke Shop, which has signs in their windows about what
they sell, both in English and Spanish, though the latter is filled with
misspellings and grammatical errors. There are also two Hispanic butcher
shops, Carniceria "El Paisa" and Carniceria Las Americas on the same block
as each other. Several small corner stores have Dominican flags in the
windows, and signs proclaiming "Se Habla Español". Other ethnic
groups have their own grocery stores, most notably the recent influx of
Islamic immigrants, which brought about stores such as Fatema Halal
Grocery and Everest Grocery Halal Meat. Other commercial services to the
Dominican community include Greenpoint Electronics, which has signs for
everything in both English and Spanish; Llamadas Internacionales Pronto
Envio, which offers special long distance rates to several Latin American
nations, but advises customers to "pagamos en dolares"; and Gil Travel &
Business Services, a Spanish-speaking travel agency which helps arrange
trips to visit family in the Dominican Republic and other Latin American
nations.
Religious
Catholic churches in Woodside, such as St.
Theresa's Church, always offer Spanish Mass for their Dominican
congregation. This is in contrast to the policy of churches nearer to the
Astoria side of Woodside, such as St. Joseph's Church. There, there is a
greater
English-speaking community, and so the Spanish Mass is held in the
auditorium of the attached school, because English Mass takes up the
actual church. This illustrates the differences that can be caused by a
very localized population, since the two parishes are not very far from
each other at all. The Assembly Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses, or Salón de
Asambleas de los Testigos de Jehová also services Spanish-speaking
Jehovah's Witnesses in Woodside, as half of its signs proclaim.
There are also Islamic services in Arabic
held in Woodside, at locations such as Jame Masjid. However, these are,
rather obviously, unrelated to the Dominican community, as they service a
different and wholly separate Islamic community.
Education
There are a few elementary schools
throughout Woodside and Sunnyside including PS 12, PS 229, PS 11, PS 151,
PS 152, PS 150, and PS 199. PS 199 and PS 152 are the schools that serve
the primary areas of Dominican concentration. All of these schools provide
bilingual classes for Hispanic immigrants and children of Hispanic
immigrants. However, all speakers of languages other than English and
Spanish are placed together in remedial English programs. The local junior
high school is IS 125 within one of the areas of Dominican concentration
(47th street and 47th avenue) has a continued Spanish bilingual program as
well as a Korean bilingual program and a general ESL program for those
students who speak other languages. Private and Catholic schools, such as
St. Theresa's Catholic School, provide remedial English programs but don't
provide bilingual classes for specific languages.
Other Ethnic Groups
While there is a strong Dominican community
in Woodside, it is definitely not the only one. As we have mentioned,
there are also significant Irish, Chinese, Korean, and Islamic
populations, as well as large groups of Mexicans and Colombians. Besides
those groups, there are also ethnic groups that are more concentrated in
other nearby Queens neighborhoods. For example, there are many Indians
and Pakistanis, though Jackson Heights is better known as a home to this
group. Even so, they have a noticeable community, owning and operating a
few small shops and selling a few publications in their native languages,
as well as maintaining their culture. In a similar situation is the Greek
population of Woodside, spilling over from nearby Astoria, as well as a
few different Eastern European groups, who emigrated since the collapse of
the Soviet Union. There are also other Spanish-speaking groups, such as
Ecuadorians and Puerto Ricans. These groups, like the Mexicans and
Colombians, are less distinguished from the Dominican community, at least
to the outsider's point of view, due to the common language. There are
also smaller African-American, Caribbean, and German populations, but
these groups tend not to cluster and instead maintain their culture
privately, within their own families.
Medical Services
The Medical Institute that serves the
neighborhoods of Sunnyside and Woodside is Elmhurst Hospital Center and
affiliated clinics located at 79-01 Broadway in the Elmhurst neighborhood
just east of Sunnyside (zip code 11373). Elmhurst Hospital Center provides
interpreters fluent in over 30 languages, including Spanish. Hospital
access to the AT&T language line increases this range of languages to 140
languages. Signage is printed in English, Chinese, Korean, and Spanish
with Russian signs soon to come. In addition, most if not all of the
hospital's printed reference materials for patients are prepared in
English, Spanish, Chinese and Korean. The hospital also offers special
bicultural mental health programs to Asian and Hispanic patients in
Spanish and most Asian languages and dialects for both an inpatients and
outpatients. The few private practices within the communities, for the
most part, have members fluent in Spanish either because they are native
speakers or because they have picked up a necessary level of fluency
after years of serving the Spanish speaking community.
Organizations
There are a few organizations that provide
services to immigrants in the neighborhoods of Sunnyside and Woodside. The
American Immigrants group offers citizenship classes, legal services, and
immigration services to Woodside residents in Italian, Spanish, and
Portuguese. The Latin American Integration Center offers free immigration
and citizenship services in Spanish to Hispanic immigrants in Woodside.
The Sunnyside Community Services group offers legal and immigration
services to immigrants in English, Chinese, French, Greek, Italian,
Korean, Polish, Romanian, Russian and Spanish for free. The highly active
Dominico-American Society, located in Corona, serves Dominicans in several
neighborhoods of Queens including Woodside, Corona, and Elmhurst. They
provide a variety of services to Dominican immigrants including
citizenship, legal, job counseling, and immigration services all in
Spanish. The Emerald Isle Immigration Center is a not-for-profit
organization established in 1988. Its main goal is to provide immigration
and legal services to Irish immigrants in the United States, but they also
provide legal and immigration services in Spanish to residents of
Woodside.
Government Services
Like many other communities in Queens,
voting and campaign materials are provided in many of the languages other
than English that are spoken in Sunnyside and Woodside including Spanish,
Korean, and Indian dialects. Because immigrants make up such a great part
of these two communities, local representatives make a great effort to
campaign to the different immigrant groups and to attend to issues
pertinent to each group. The vast Dominican community is no exception.
Social services and social service information, including welfare, are
readily available in more than 30 languages. The social workers and
interpreters are available in many languages including but not limited to
Spanish, Korean, Chinese, and Indian dialects. However, other services
aren't offered in as many languages. The school system, New York City
Board of Education, offers all of their information in English, Spanish,
and Chinese. In addition, the school system offers translators in these
languages and has an entire Spanish translation of the NYCBE website, http://www.nycenet.edu/spanish/.
The local police force and court system have translators and officers
available who speak Spanish, Chinese, and Korean but have to rely on
relatives and social workers to provide interpretation. The Queensborough
Public Library system has come a long way in the past few years. Books and
periodicals are available in English, Chinese, French, Greek, Italian,
Korean, Polish, Romanian, Russian and Spanish as well as other less
commonly spoken languages. Services, programs, and publications from the
library are available in many languages including Spanish and Chinese.
Case Study
Tanni Calderon is representative of many
Dominican immigrants who come to Woodside. He came to Woodside from a
rural town in the Dominican Republic where he was a secondary school
teacher to local children. He arrived here with his wife five years ago
after the birth of his son in order to find financial opportunities and to
assure that his son would have the educational opportunities. He didn't
speak English when he came to America, only Spanish. Through a family
member he was able to secure an apartment in one of the Cosmopolitan
buildings on 47th Street and a job at a textile factory in Woodside. In
the five years since his arrival, Tanni himself has not learned English.
This is not because he is unable to grasp the concepts of the English
language it is because he chooses not to. All his friends and neighbors
speak Spanish. All of his coworkers speak Spanish. According to him, he
hasn't encountered any real difficulties with not knowing English. But
after five years he is still at that same factory. Although he and his
wife mostly watch the Spanish channels that are widely available in New
York, his son, who is now five and has begun kindergarten at PS 199,
prefers to watch children's programming in English. Although Tanni does
not watch these programs with his son, he picks up many of the English
words his son learns from these programs as well as in the school
bilingual program. Through his son, Tanni has acquired the ability to use
code switching to a limited extent. His son, like many of the first
generation Americans in the Dominican community, has probably already
surpassed the highest level of English language skill his father will ever
attain. Because of the environment presented in schools, the first
generation is typically more interested in assimilating into American
culture and also learns English more easily. Tanni is content where he
is. He is happy that his son is progressing in English and will hopefully
someday be successful in his chosen career. That is his only concern.
Conclusion
Through both careful observation and
diligent research, we have found that the Dominican population is a very
significant part of the Woodside/Sunnyside community. It is very well
represented in most societal capacities, such as education, commerce,
religion, and medical facilities. However, we have also found that rather
than being a dominant group, it is one of many diverse cultures living
together in the neighborhood.
