Personal Narrative: Lotes En Cleveland

His name was Bernie. He was in. I did exactly what I’d told him. I brought him a piece of bread, and a small container filled with water. I met with him near a bridge, where he stayed underneath, hidden. I’d sometimes also see him after school, too, if I had a little extra time.

I have written many essays since I was in middle school yet most of my writing was not that important besides for a grade. Yet there is one piece of writing I wrote that change my life and felt that it had an important impact to The City of Chicago. My teacher during that time wanted the class to enter in a citywide competition, which is called “Do The Write Thing”. It is a way for students to voice their opinions on how to stop the violence in Chicago. I wanted to help reduce the violence in Chicago since many youths are being killed in the streets every single day. In my paper, I mainly focused on three body paragraphs. The first one was why the violence in the city was increasing. The second one was some type of violence that I have witness in my own personal life. The final paragraph

After all he was a complete stranger. I was fourteen and I felt like my life had been altered without my permission. I saw him once more after this initial meeting. We went to White Castle with my other siblings. As a child I struggled with my weight. I remember not ordering a lot of food. I didn’t want him to think I was fat. I made sure to be polite and engaging. I wanted him to accept me. I wanted him to like me. I talked about school. But I made sure not to brag about my good grades. He asked me about boys and although at the time there was a boy I liked, I didn’t dare tell him that. He laughed at my vague response and said he didn’t want to have to hurt some knucklehead boy. In that moment I felt safe, protected. It felt so good.

Have you ever been in a situation where you didn’t think you could do it? Well I have many times and I’m going to write about a time during Rodeo when I didn’t think I was going to be able to do well in goat tying.

“Bienvenidos a La Villita” is spelled across an arch that marks the entryway of Little Village, a southwest neighborhood of Chicago known for its diversity and culture. There are all types of neighborhoods throughout the city. Little Village is just one of these ethnic neighborhoods that Chicago is known for. It is often referred to as the “Mexico of the Midwest,” but was not always occupied by the large population of Latinos it is known for today. The population composition of Little Village has changed dramatically from predominantly Czech and Polish to a Latino population in the present. This shift in population is what created La Villita (Little Village), a point of entry for Latino immigrants to Chicago. The identity of a neighborhood

I witnessed my cousins boyfriend corpse lying on my neighbors lawn. It was a humid summer night around 3:30 when I peeked through my window and saw my devastated cousin sobbing uncontrollably on my decaying porch. Being from East chicago, Indiana has transformed me into the person I am today.

Both Ernesto Galarza’s “Barrio Boy” and Joan Didion’s “Notes From a Native Daughter” write about Sacramento’s past. Both authors talk about Sacramento during two different time periods. Joan Didion talks about the mid-century and Ernesto Galarza talks about the early 20th century. Although both author’s perspective of Sacramento differs from era to era, there are differences in certain characteristics described by both authors. Galarza’s essay focuses on an immigrant point of view arriving into Sacramento versus Didion’s experiences as a native decedent of Sacramento. Joan Didion’s Sacramento is a very different place compared to Ernesto Galarza’s , for him it’s an

Solorio looked onto the large planter box and saw green graffiti written on it. Solorio began taking an incident report and saw the male walking toward him. The male asked Solorio if they could keep the incident between them. Solorio believed he was referring to the green graffiti on the planter box. Solorio told the male he would keep the incident between them, if he didn’t write on the planter box again. The male reportedly said, “Ok”. Solorio finished his incident report and later took a photo of the male (see attached

He appeared to be 20 or 21. He sat next to me on the ledge and began to watch with me. The man was very readable, I could tell you his life story in moments of his arrival. His face was the kind to stop a girl in her tracks, but he must of got used to that. I could already tell that when he looked at a woman, they would overcompensate with a nonchalant glimmer in their weak smile, accompanied by a slight blush on the apples of each cheek. I wasn't going to fawn over him either so it was a mutual understanding. He was modest too, which must had made the girls squirm in excitement. He was handsome, but maybe he was more than that. "I'm Thomas, and you are?" His ice blue eyes should have melted my heart-- but my heart and brain was already

The city of Chicago has been displayed as a dangerous city in which all residents are affiliated with drugs, gangs, and misconduct of firearms. Whether someone fits into this stereotype or not, is normally based on their surroundings and their interactions with others. Growing up in Gage Park, named one of the worst neighborhoods, falling into this stereotype and becoming affiliated with drugs, guns, and gangs, would not be too hard for someone to do. However, I have lived in Gage Park my whole life and have not fallen into the status quo. I have had family members and friends fall into this realm of unpleasantness and watching them become another wrong kind of statistic is upsetting. I have been faced with the decision of continuing to have

Over my spring break I was lucky enough to get to go to Florida with my college baseball team and I got to see one if the most beautiful baseball stadiums in the US, JetBlue Park. I got to watch Florida Gulf Coast take on Florida State at JetBlue Park, which is used as a spring training field for the Boston Red Sox. My initial thought of the field is it’s almost exactly like Fenway Park with the same field layout, the big green monster in left field. Which surprised me because this was only a spring training field, very few games will be played or broadcasted here. This ballpark was unexpectedly nice and an experience I will never forget.

He came close to me and said welcome to the ricefields. He then proceeded to stand up and walk in to the woods leaving me for dead. While at the wood line he turned around and looked back and smiles sniggering as he does it.

​I lived in every house in the courtyard at one time or another, and my favorite by far was the Green Pavilion, named for the ivy slowly climbing over and eroding its façade. On rainy days, we spent our free time in the sunroom. An outdoor staircase with a beautiful, hand-carved banister led to the upper floors. The second floor was a library, and for a long time, I lived in one of the third-floor rooms with Charell, McFowles, Newman, and Edmond Claude, who is now a famous

The span of this narrative takes place Thirty years prior to current time, in Two Thousand and Seventeen. At the time I was a young and well educated Osteopathic surgeon, however I had quite little experience with the field as the majority of patients came for infections in the foot rather than bone and muscle pain. I remember I had a child patient on the first week of 2017, a young man no older than 5 with a horrid infection within his big toe due to the digging of the nail. But nitrogen wasn’t able to fix it, so he had to have a quarter of his foot removed in an unnecessarily long procedure. This wasn't the first time this had happened, however I had grown tired of infection. Only people who deserved a bad condition should have it.

Commuting to Tamazula, Mexico to convert the urban decay and decrepit slums into regenerated habitable communities, taught me a cosmopolitan comprehension of the meaning of community. While visiting my grandmother in Tamazula, I became aware of a substantial community who continually lost their homes to the failed war on drugs. Prodded by my mother, I traveled multiple times a year at a young age to work the sugar cane plantations which lay in the underbelly of Mexico's crime ridden ghost towns in order to make enough money to transform the village into one that parallels the proverbial "city upon a hill". What started as an act of charity induced by a sense of duty, developed into an all consuming and burning desire to participate in every