Not Really Romanian?
James Grant and Quin Chia
INTRODUCTION
Going into this project blind, our job was
to research a Romanian population living in New York City. Because the
area we were designated to investigate in Battery Park City was closed off
to normal traffic we were inclined to take advice from our fellow
classmates to investigate the Romanian population in the Astoria Boulevard
area, specifically along Astoria Boulevard, a ¾ mile street lined with
shops intermixed with houses. Upon arriving in Astoria we expected to
find a plethora of Romanians along Astoria Boulevard (if that is possible)
going about their daily activity and would essentially complete the
assignment for us. Unfortunately, when we, the six-foot two gay man and
the five-tall black girl, walked into the Bohemian Beer Garden during
Sunday afternoon drinking time and cheerfully asked "Is their a large
concentrations of Romanians in this area," the firm answer of, "No," by
the Czech bartender showed us we were no longer in the West Village and
this was not going to be the project we expected to be doing.
The Bohemian Hall next door and its flag
were what caught our eye and drew us to the street thinking we might find
Romanians in the area. Though we understood the flag was not Romanian we
assumed an Eastern European influence by the writings underneath the flag
and felt this area would be common ground. The Bartenders adamant
response to the assumption that this might be a Romanian community forced
us to consider who indeed lived here. It also made us begin to focus on
minute details as to why not one but two of our fellow classmates would
feel so strongly that this was a Romanian community. Our observations
from then on would reveal the true members living in the modest area along
with the LsOTE they might speak. We would gain an understanding of the
sort of community activities taking place, what the people themselves feel
about the changing mold of the community, and how the perception of
nationality effects people in their daily lives.
I. PRIMARY AND OTHER LOTES
We were now rather bewildered, for the
community that we expected to be dominantly Romanian was nothing of the
sort. When the large bartender with a heavy accent very sternly told us
that there were only Czechs and Slovaks in Astoria, our sense of this
assignment became distorted. Our expectations seemed to have vanished and
a sense of hopelessness in finding "our Romanian community" began to
overcome us. Quin and I were not quite sure what to think, so we
continued down the street looking for answers.
It isn't every day that we walk up to random
people on the street in search of Romanians, hence it took a little while
for us to get over our fear of talking to strangers. This tentative
nature came out as we began to ask people on the streets the things that
we thought would help us find the answers we needed. We soon learned that
we needed to discontinue our search for solely Romanians. As an elderly
woman came walking by us on the streets, we decided to go for it. "Excuse
me, ma'am, but do you live in this community?"
"Yes," she said with a wary eye.
"We're very sorry to trouble you, but we
both are studying at NYU, and for one of our classes, we are looking into
the concentration of Romanians in Astoria..." She interrupted me.
"I don't know... I don't speak English very
good." We jumped at this statement.
"Oh, well, would you mind telling us what
language you do speak?" She very proudly told us that she spoke Greek,
and that there were "many, many Greeks" in the area, according to her. We
got over our fear and now knew what we need to do; by saying a few words
we already knew that the area held a large number of Greeks who inhabited
Astoria.
Anyone we saw that seemed to be a local, we
spoke to. A woman in the park conversed with us in the same manner as
this previous one, but she proved to be Italian, and told us of the "many,
many Italians" that lived in the area. The multiethnic rainbow of the
Astoria community was getting brighter and brighter and although we were
yet to find any trace of Romanian inhabitance, we were surrounded by
Czechs, Slovaks, Greeks and Italians. Wherever we went there was someone
of a different ethnicity as we had already frequented the main street of
Astoria, a local bar, and the nearby park. It was actually in that park
that our sense of this community as a whole was put into perspective.
Since our arrival, we had been talking to
people who appeared to be the stereotypical Eastern European due to the
fact that we were on a "quest" for Romanians. However, at that moment, a
beautiful, tall black woman came walking our direction and we were
compelled to speak with her. It was from her that we ascertained the
breakdown of the LsOTE spoken in the community. She was Brazilian and
identified with a large number of Portuguese speakers in her community.
Having lived there for many years, she could attest to the fact that
Astoria was comprised of many ethnic communities including Greek, Italian,
Brazilian, Columbian, Indian, Czech and Slovak. She was very happy to
assist us in our studies and told us that we could hear most of these
languages spoken daily throughout the community. It was at this
clarification that Quin and I came to understand that our goal for this
assignment was no longer to search for Romanians, but to research the
community as a whole, and all that it may hold.
II. THE STORY
Returning to the scene of the local park in
Astoria, after our encounter with the Brazilian woman, we continued to
look for perspective candidates who could validate her assertions about
the multiethnic makeup of the area. On a nearby bench sat a middle-aged
man with his son. As his young boy played with his remote-controlled car
on the playground, we approached him and began to converse. We were
shocked at how willing this man was to speak to us as we simply explained
the nature of our research and asked him what ethnicity he was. The form
of response was similar to a small history lesson on the community.
"I am Columbian," he said, "and I speak
Spanish." The area, though, according to him, was not always as we found
it to be on that day in regards to its ethnic diversity. It had for a
long time been solely comprised Eastern Europeans, meaning the Greeks and
Italians. However, he said that lately more and more South Americans had
immigrated to the area because it was a one of the better neighborhoods in
New York City.
In fact, many of the South Americans that had moved to this area were not
solely immigrants. He continued to explain to us that Mayor Guliani had
been endorsing the moving of Manhattanites out to Astoria, where they
would find good living conditions at a lower cost than that which they
were paying. He asserted that you could save hundreds of dollars in
living costs in Astoria, while remaining a very short distance from
Manhattan. "It's a very, very good neighborhood," he told us many times.
Guliani's endorsement of the area was the
greatest presence of governmental provisions that we could detect and even
so, a few nudges from the mayor for people to move out to the boroughs
hardly counts as a "provision." This community, as far as we were able to
see, received no special treatment and while they may have their own
language and culture here, should they enter the solely English-speaking
world, we assume that they would be forced to assimilate. This is only
our perception, but while there may be large numbers of people in these
ethnic groups in Astoria, due to the greater number of monolingual English
speakers, we presume that their own way of life would be subverted to the
more dominant English language and society.
III. THE COMMUNITY
Our conclusive observations about the
community were that it contained a large Greek influence. This could be
seen on 31st street right off Astoria Boulevard which had at least five
community centers and Hellenic markets within blocks of each other and all
on the same side of the street. This is opposed to the one Czech/Slovak
operated center that we found, The Bohemian Hall. Yet, though Italian,
Spanish and Portuguese were considered equally influential languages in
the area we did not notice any centers dedicated to people who speak those
languages. This might have been because of what the Colombian man noted
that South American Spanish, and Italian speakers have only recently begun
to flock to the area. Or perhaps the diversity of the people who speak
Spanish, for say, keep them from uniting and forming centers. Or there
just may be larger communities of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese speakers
elsewhere that they do not feel the need to have such establishments in
this community. Whatever the case, the community may be very diverse in
its multilingualism, but because of the presence of the community centers
with Greek writings engraved everywhere, the Greek culture at first glance
would appear to dominate the area. This also included the Greek owned
restaurant at which we had lunch, Neptune's Diner. There, they offered a
wide range of Greek specialty foods along with Italian cooking and fine
American hamburgers. We were able to listen to our Columbian waitress
take an order next to us in Spanish, while the Italian family dined behind
us dressed in their Sunday best. A visit to the corner Star Deli allowed
us to take a look at daily newspapers written in Spanish and three
publications in Greek. This store was run by a wonderfully lively Indian
man who was proud to answer the question of what was his nationality
stating, "The great India... the next super power in the world!...
(quickly adding) and peaceful, multicultural country."
IV. CHURCH AND THE GIRLS
Though the nearest governmental and hospital
services were too great a distance from the area for us to reach within
walking distance, we were able to visit the Immaculate Conception Catholic
Church in order to research the use of LsOTE. The churches newsletter
revealed that there were numerous LsOTE being used for services. The
church had a section designated to preach in Italian for the first service
and Spanish during the second service while the main section of the church
was held in English. The church was also able to accommodate confessions
in English, Spanish and Italian on Saturdays and Maltese on the second
Wednesday of every month. This system of LsOTE use also applies for
baptisms and marriages specifically noting the requirements needed for
marriages of those who were baptized in foreign countries.
As we continued to observe this fascinating
community we decided to interview any school age children we could find
due to the fact it was a Sunday and the schools were closed. What we were
able to ascertain from three Brazilian school aged girls, one just
entering high school and the other two finishing off their last year in
middle school, that LsOTE were not being used in schools for teaching
purposes. Though, they did state that they spoke Portuguese with other
students regularly and could detect the use of other languages such as
Italian, Spanish, and what they referred to as Indian. One of the girls
who had spent more of her primary education in this area than the other
two was also able to share with us that her elementary school did offer
bilingual education and instruction, which aided in her being able to
function well with English and her native protégées. We assumed from this
statement that bilingual education and ESL were devices used for younger
children, however, in middle school and high school, children were
expected to be proficient in English for study.
V. CONCLUSION
Our trip of this community ended with these
three Brazilian girls and began with the Czech bartender. These people
may have view themselves as completely different but they did share one
amazing characteristic. At first, they both spoke to us in standard
English but as soon as it was revealed that we were interested in language
and/or ethnicity study they both donned full flown Brazilian and Czech
accents. One was in defense of his ethnicity, the bartender, while the
girls showed ethnic pride by displaying their accent. During our search
to find Romanians we asked the people whom we encountered if they knew of
any Romanians in the area and received questioning looks. We later
changed our statement and asked about people's ethnicity or the knowledge
of other ethnicities in the area. We noticed that people were taken aback
by this and were timid in answering our question. But when we decided to
ask what nationality people were we got responses such as the one from the
Indian storekeeper and the Brazilian girls. It wasn't until we used the
term nationality that we noticed people had the most pride in
asserting who they were and could associate better with their group and
those who live among them.
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