“The Korean American community is very tight-knit. From the outside it can sometimes look like inwardness or selfishness, but it’s primarily based on survival. When you’re an immigrant, feeding your children and paying your rent comes before integrating with society. And the support to do those things normally comes from within the community. For Korean Americans, the community mainly revolves around the church. Korean immigrants will go to church even if they aren’t rel...igious. Because that’s where the community is. It’s where people speak their language. It’s where they can find information, and a network, and jobs, and people to cook them meals when they’re sick. It can sometimes seem like an unwillingness to integrate. But the closeness of the community is really about trying to survive.”

“You can’t be humble about what you deserve in this city. I had to learn that the hard way. I came here with a small island mentality. In Puerto Rico, you take what you can get, and if someone sees that you are struggling, they will help you. Not here. If you are running a business, people will step on you until you break. We first started selling coffee at street fairs. The organizers were charging us $600 per day to rent a spot. It was impossible to sell that much c...offee. They knew we were losing money. They knew we were suffering. But they told us there was nothing they could do—that was the fee. Then we learned that the people next to us were paying $300. When we threatened to leave, they lowered our rent to $125. And at first they told us they couldn’t go any lower! That’s what I mean. The organizers didn’t care what was a fair price. They cared about getting the biggest share they could. You can’t wait to be given anything in this city. If you want something, you have to demand it by its name.”

“I just pitched my first full softball game in our office league! We lost by one run. I was nervous the entire time but I made it all the way through. I thought we had one inning left but we didn’t. So we lost. But don’t say ‘lost.’ That sounds bad. Say that we ‘almost won.’ Say that we ‘almost won against the best team in the league.’ I want to thank the captain Chip for believing in me and letting me pitch. I didn’t think he’d let me pitch because we lost 18-2 th...e last time I pitched. But he let me pitch because Dan was on vacation. Chip is so great. And I want to thank Cindy for cheering me on. Every time I missed the plate she’d say: ‘Great job, Rosemary! Keep confusing them!’ I love Cindy so much. And Elvin and Jo and Kyle. I couldn’t have ‘almost won’ without them. It's so fun to be part of a team. I love them so much.”

“I grew up in the projects and got involved in drugs early. I committed a stupid ass robbery when I was seventeen and ended up being charged as an adult. I got out of prison when I was twenty. I worked a minimum wage job for awhile, then I found a Korean shop in the garment district that was making counterfeit clothes. They would put any label I wanted on them. I could buy jeans for $15 and bring them up to Harlem, and I’d go to the pool hall and sell them to the Jamaica...ns and Dominicans for $25. I know it wasn’t exactly legal. But I finally felt like I was making an honest living. Especially compared to my past. I was working hard. Things were going well. I probably sold two thousand jeans that first year. But three days before Christmas I got robbed. Three kids ambushed me. I’d been out working all day. I was tired. My fingers were cold. And I didn’t want to hand over the money. So they shot me in the stomach. I was so angry. I felt so violated. I’d made that money by working hard and they’d taken it from me. I could feel the old Gerald coming back. I wanted to kill them. I went looking for them after I got out of the hospital. I walked the streets with my colonoscopy bag. I was so close to being pulled back to my past. But eventually the anger subsided and I went back to work. I even stopped with the counterfeit clothes and sold my own designs. I didn’t want to go back to prison. Prison didn’t correct me, but it did check me. The old Gerald is always there. Just a little bit. Like when I’m feeling desperate and I’m mad that I still can’t afford to get my mom out of the projects. But I always keep him in check. I saw too many guys in prison who were there for life. And I love life too much to be them. I want to go bungee jumping one day. I want to go fishing.”

“She committed suicide a week prior to our thirtieth anniversary. Our oldest daughter had died of leukemia a couple years earlier. Holly took it extra hard. We drifted apart. We’d parse our words. Nothing was natural anymore: ‘Do we talk this way?’ ‘Do we laugh at this moment?’ ‘ Do we even have a right to laugh?’ But I still thought we were doing OK. Things weren’t like they used to be. But I still thought things were OK. We rented a hotel room for our thirtieth a...nniversary. I was supposed to meet her there after work. She overdosed on pills before I got there. I don’t know why she did it that way. She said in her note that she wasn’t angry, but I don’t know why she did it that way. I fell apart. I started drinking a lot and doing cocaine. I lost my job. One day I was giving a presentation after being up all night on drugs, and I just started hallucinating. I thought one of the clients was Holly. I stopped the presentation and started calling her name. The company was nice about it. They gave me a nice severance package. But I gave all the money to my kids. I’ve been on the streets ever since. It’s been eight years. My kids have tried to give me the money back but I won’t take it. I ride the subways at night. If it’s warm enough, I sleep on a bench. I read a little. I write a little. I go to the soup line in the morning. I’m just existing. I wasn’t a good husband. I wasn’t a good father. And now I’m doing penance.”

“My husband and I have been trying to adopt a child from foster care for six years. The process is unbelievably difficult. There’s a reason people choose to adopt from foreign countries. Right now I’m waiting on my son to finish his ballet performance. He came from an orphanage in Guatemala. Can you imagine how different his life would be if we hadn’t adopted him? So this time we tried to adopt in America. We’ve inquired on 530 cases in five years. We’ve reached the f...inal round several times, but each time we’re not chosen. Once it seemed like we were finally on the brink of adopting five siblings. We spent so much time with them. We were bonded with them. But at the last moment, the top administrator vetoed our case. No reason was given. He thought we ‘weren’t a good fit.’ We were devastated. I still have their pictures. We’re good parents. We have six grown children and two who still live with us. Everyone is doing well. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to adopt. Everything moves so slowly because the bureaucracy is overloaded and underfunded. These kids have no money so they have no voice. I’m in a support group on Facebook full of people like me. Everyone is agonizing over the reasons that they aren’t being matched: too old, too many children, not enough children, not enough money. The guesses are endless. In the meantime there are 100,000 kids in this country who are waiting for a family.”

“Gram died right before Mother’s Day last year. She grew up in Georgia and spent most of her childhood working in the cotton fields. She dropped out of school after seventh grade. She moved North with her family and started working in a button factory. My mom was her only child. They both almost died during childbirth. Gram raised Mom all by herself, and after we were born, she helped raise us too. My friends called her Diva Miss Eva. She’d roll down the window of her... Oldsmobile to tell people to pull up their pants. And she loved pink. We took this picture on the day my mom graduated from community college. It was in the middle of June. It was so hot. But Gram comes outside in a pink evening gown, mink fur, and evening gloves. We told her it was too hot but she said: ‘My baby’s graduating!’ She loved this photo. She put it in a frame and hung it above her pink bed. In her pink room.”

“I’d say twelve is the normal age when a kid around here comes outside alone for the first time. That’s when the trouble starts. When you’re fresh outside and nobody’s telling you what to do. My mom kept me inside until I was fourteen. Both my brothers had been to juvenile, so she was more strict with me. I got arrested four times that first year. Probably four times the next year too. I never went to The Island, but my mom kept having to pick me up from the precinct. ... They called it ‘Disorderly Conduct,’ but it was almost always for fighting. A group of kids would walk by from another block, and they’re staring, and somebody yells out: ‘What are you looking at?’ And believe it or not-- that’s all it takes. One little sentence. Everybody wants the pride of saying they didn’t back down. I could have chosen not to participate. But it’s hard to avoid. Imagine if one hundred people around you are smoking cigarettes. Nine times out of ten, you’re going to start smoking.”