Who I am as a person is closely related to 
Watsonville. My community is small and full of 
immigrants like my parents. We are an agricultural 
town and a lot of my friends’ parents and my parents 
work in agriculture in one way or another. Some work 
in the canneries, in the packaging companies and in 
the fields picking strawberries and raspberries.

I always like believing that my community is different 
than any other. I don’t think it’s perfect, it’s
actually far from perfection, but it’s the good and 
the bad that make my community so special.
It’s full of culture and everyone has something 
different to offer. When talking about who I am, I
have to include Watsonville, because with no 
Watsonville there’s no me. Sure, my family also
makes up a big part of who I am, but Watsonville also 
makes up a big part of them.

I’ve picked up many traits from my community, like 
working hard. The ones who work in the fields work 
many hours under the hot sun for minimum wage or 
sometimes below that, but they do it anyway.
They know that in order to succeed you have to work no 
matter the circumstance or conditions. Living life in 
this manner makes them tough. Being tough and 
hardworking is a trait that the people of
my community have passed down to me.
 
My parents have instilled in me the pride of working 
and making things happen for myself. I see other teens 
who have never had to struggle for anything and their 
parents seem to have never
struggled either. 

My parents have been working since they were five, and 
they have a 6th grade education. In a way, I had to
grow up faster than most kids. I could never ask my 
parents educational questions or ask them to help
me with my homework. I had to figure it out myself.  
My parents have been living in the US for 27 years
and still don’t write or speak English. Hell, my dad 
is somewhat illiterate in Spanish. They say it takes a
village to raise a child, and it does. It took a whole 
community to raise me.

I grew up speaking Spanish and learned to speak 
English on my own at age four. I can remember the
look on my mom’s face when she asked her eight year 
old son (me) to read a bill to her because she
didn’t understand what it said. 

Now as a teen in high school, not speaking English at 
home has really affected me in my English classes. I 
see the English-speaking students get A’s very easily 
and I work very hard just to get by. In a way, I feel—
no, I am—behind the rest of the world. I hate being 
behind others or feeling like other people are better 
than me. I always have to prove to myself that I’m not 
inferior and I’m just as good or better than anyone 
else.

I understand that by living in my community, which is 
mostly populated by minorities, conditions are not 
always as good as at the privileged schools. In my 
school, I often see students slacking off and working 
in the fields after high school, or girls who get 
pregnant before they’re 18.

Their parents, who risked coming to this country so 
their children could have a better life, are upset.
They jeopardized their life, their whole world to 
embark on a journey to the land of freedom, for
what? For their little girl to get knocked up and 
their son to drop out?

This is what my community is. It’s a tough place to 
live, but it adds to my knowledge and my know-how.
I have street smarts from living in Watsonville.

I want to grow up and be successful, and not the drug 
dealer who lives on my block. I want my children
to have the same values as the ones I learned in 
Watsonville, but without the struggle.

I want my community to shatter its reputation and show 
that it doesn’t only produce low-life ignorant
people, but hardworking intelligent people who will 
make a difference.