Oral History

I interviewed a friend of mine named, Vanessa. She is a girl that lived in Chicago all her life. Since I was not exposed to Chicago as much as she has, I was interested on how her life has been living in her neighborhood.

How long have you lived in Chicago?

Nineteen years. Wait how old am I? Oh yeah, nineteen.

Have you always lived in the same neighborhood?

Um, well I used to live in an apartment till I was like maybe two, and then my family and I moved into a house were I live now.

Do you remember anything about your first house?
No, um, I don’t really remember too much. Um, all I know is that every single one of my family members used to live at the same apartment at least one point in their life.

What do you mean?
Like all my first cousins and my um aunts and uncles used to live there. Because like they came here from um, Mexico and it was like basically like their um, um, what do you call it? Like kind of like a starter house since they were new to the country so like yea, whenever one family moved out another family would move in. There were four floors including the basement with one family living in each one.

Do you remember how the neighborhood was?
No not really. I think it was kind [of] ghetto. Ha ha. Like we didn’t have any grass on the ground. That’s really all I remember unless my cousins tell me about it.

How is the neighborhood you live in now?
Well the neighborhood used to be like really nice. But it’s slowly starting to become ghetto too. Like because like a couple years ago my brother got robbed walking home and like some guy came up to him and started following him. My brother was listening to his iPOD and the guy like asked him what he was listening to. My brother tried to like ignore him and then the guy was like, “Gimme yo ipod!” Ha ha. And like nothing happened to him. He was ok. But it like sucked because like my neighborhood used to be really nice and it’s just slowly getting worst and worst.

Do you see yourself living here in the next ten years?
Hell no! Ha ha. No I don’t think so. It’s getting really bad. Like my family is ready to get up and move to the suburbs but the economy kind [of] sucks. Ha ha. So it’s hard to sell our house. We tried to sell it a few months ago but nothing ever happened. So yeah. I would love to move out of this neighborhood. Ha ha.