Alex Montanile

        Interview essay

The subject that I interviewed is from a culture that is the very opposite from what I grew up experiencing. Fatou, is a 19 year old college student at the City College of NY, and is looking to major in something relating to business. This is similar to me as I share an interest in business, but the interview made it quite evident our paths to reach this commonality have been very different. For starters she first lived in Nashville Tennessee, and then moved to the Bronx before her preteen years. Attending George Washington high school, and living with her four siblings, parents and an aunt. Fatou was raised Muslim–which she does not much believe in, feeling too constrained by the religion considering her bisexuality–, and her parents immigrated from Senegal back in the 1980’s. Her first school in Nashville was mostly white, but the schools attended in NYC were much more diverse. Fatou’s culture at home revolved around family, and having loyalty to one’s family. That they “constantly reminded us that they came to this country to work, to make money for their family”. 

On the other hand, my upbringing was quite different. I was not in a city, but the suburbs of NYC, near New Rochelle NY. I was an only child, one parent having been raised Catholic, and the other Jewish. Considering this, they decided to not raise me religious, as choosing may have felt unfair to the other parent. I attended a school much like Fatou’s first school, with not much diversity, comprised of mostly white kids, like myself. Although fundamentally we were raised and brought into the world under very different circumstances(black or white, male or female, siblings or not, immigrant parents or natural born US citizen parents,etc), we were taught the same morals of loyalty and family. Somewhere along the line something must have been similar for the both of us, as the answers to the questions were quite the same to what I would have given.

My questioning was guided toward Covid-19 vaccinations, and the issues surrounding it. The interview was conducted in the lobby of the CCNY towers. Many of her answers took time to formulate, but were well articulated, and had much thought behind them. I asked why she had been vaccinated and her opinion on vaccinations, she laughed at the question almost as if there was no other option,”I didn’t want to die of covid, and felt it would be selfish to not try and become apart of the solution towards herd immunity” and “ it doesn’t make sense to me that people are denying something that can really just help us all in the end”. These are opinions Fatou and I share, as it is fact based and a logical conclusion through the assessment of our current societal dilemma. I asked why she thinks many immigrants, particularly in the African community, are refusing the vaccine. She said they do not trust a government that threatens to deport them, and also simply do not know what to believe stating,” my parents would get these memes, these anti-vax memes circulating on WhatsApp and they would actually believe it and, this is significant because they don’t know any better because of the lack of education back in their home country”. This answer seemed to make her quite upset, as it was personal, and she had to deal with it first hand. People from other countries do not understand why anti-vax is gaining so much traction, as they don’t get why something like this could be made political, not being clued in on the fact that in our country, everything is political. However, having immigrant parents, Fatou was essentially forced to learn and understand American concepts and institutions along with her siblings. Even with our opposite cultures, we both look to the facts when it comes to societal problems like this. She said that if someone wasn’t vaccinated, she feels they do not have everyone else’s best interest in mind while she does, (an answer that got a bit of a rise out of her). I feel the same way.

In essence, our cultures had an impact on who we are, but did not deter us from developing similar world views.