Gregory Castro
Gregory Castro was born in 1988 in the Dominican Republic. In the year 1996, at the age of seven he was brought to the United States by his father in the search for a better future and opportunities for better education than he and his family could get in the Dominican Republic.
When he first got to the U.S. the language represented a struggle for him, since in the Dominican Rep. he did not receive any education in any other language but Spanish and one of the things he recalled from that time was that every day after coming home from school, his stepmother at the time would have him sitting in front of the tv with an English course call Inglés Sin Barreras. The inability to speak English, not even to his siblings who were born in the U.S and didn’t know much Spanish forced him to learn English faster. Also, being a school were people didn’t really understand him, and where he did not understand them also pushed him to learn faster. As he was only seven at that time, age kind of played a difference on how fast he learned, and it helped him to get it.
Gregory is currently a High School teacher. He teaches English from grades 7th through 12th and is currently teaching 11th grade ELA, AP language, and composition. He is also a Graduate student at Lehman College part of the City University of New York, and as of next fall I should also be able to teach English as a second language to speakers of other languages; immigrants who come to this country who don’t know the language.
As of today, Castro has been in the United States for almost 23 years and has only been to the Dominican Republic once, when he was in the 8th grade. He says that he wouldn’t go back to live in the Dominican Republic for multiple reasons. One of them being the fact that he has grown here and has make his life around only some members of his family and even when he still keeps in touch with some relatives in the Dominican Rep. is not the same, they haven’t been with him. Also, the mentality of people in the Dominican Rep. towards homosexuality is very old and closed-minded, aggressive even. The people in the Dominican Rep. still don’t know how to deal and accept with this topic the way we in the United Stated do and that is a something that needs to be improve not only in DR but in many other countries as well.
I would say we are the same – Let me not say the word the same because everyone is different, but we have- my family is my family. It is composed of the same kind of people, my parents my, grandparents, siblings, things of the sort. We’re a little bit crazy, but that’s just any family.
Gregory reflecting on family bonds.
Click here for the full transcript of Dioni’s interview with Gregory.
“Ser Gay en República Dominicana”, Articulo tomado del portal Medium.com y escrito por Jesus Rodriguez
https://steemit.com/steemit/@jusstfran/ser-gay-en-republica-dominicana
As a whole I really enjoyed doing this project. I have known the person I interviewed since I got to this country five years ago and he has been of a lot of help when it came down to integrating into the new education system of this country. But even when I met him five years ago I never asked him about how his childhood, how was it for him to come to the United States, never really got in deep into his personal life and it was really a great experience to connect with someone that have similar goals and personal life experiences as me.
Dioni reflecting on what he learned about Gregory through the interview.
Click here to read more of Dioni’s reflection on the project.
