Is It Worth It? Deokie Deonarine's Journey to America

What is the biggest thing you’ve ever had to sacrifice in your life? Why did you do it? How did it make you feel? Deokie Deonarine is a person who sacrificed for others her entire life and still continues to do so, for the benefit of the people that she loves.

Deokie Sankar was born on October 26, 1962 to her parents in the small island of Trinidad and Tobago. She was one of seven children and was the youngest of the group. As a child she was very active, taking on the persona as a tomboy. She hung out with the boys and did a lot of physical work and activity. She originally lived in a house

Location of Trinidad and Tobago on a map

Flag of Trinidad and Tobago

of dirt and grass until her family finally saved up enough money to finally build a house of wood and bricks. She describes, “I grew up in a village. We grew up, we had no running water and no electricity. We grew up in a dirt house covered in grass. We had animals that we fed and we did our own gardening. We took care of animals we had a farm. Eventually, as I got older we ended up building a house made of bricks.”  There, her family started up a family business. They built a farm that she worked on most of her life there. She would feed the chickens, milk the cows, and bring them to the market to sell. Deokie began working at the age of 11 and has nonstop since then. Trinidad and Tobago had experienced an economic boom after World War II, but hit a downturn in the 60s. Their labor force was unusually unionized, something very uncommon for a small island in the Caribbean. Therefore, as economic growth slowed, demands for better working conditions and more equitable distribution of wealth began to increase. Also, the high unemployment rate (15%) and growing resentment over foreign control intensified the deterioration of the economy.

As a child, Deokie loved school, even though it was extremely difficult to get to. She had to walk two miles every day to school and

Deokie (left) and her classmates at school

two miles back, in the sweltering Caribbean heat and the heavy down pours. She was so intelligent that she skipped a grade. Being one of the top students in her grade, she had such high hopes for her future. Unfortunately, her parents were not financially stable enough to send her to college so she had to settle for what was the equivalent of a high school degree so she was unable to pursue her dream career, accounting. In Trinidad, the mean years of schooling in the 1980s only accumulated to about 7 years, much less than the intended.

Education years in Trinidad

Deokie and Hemanchal’s Wedding

In her early 20s, she met Hemanchal Deonarine (nicknamed Dave) through mutual friends and they were inseparable ever since. After dating for 4 years, they finally got married on June 3, 1990. As they began discussing and planning out their life together, they realized that she couldn’t have the life she imagined here. She knew it wasn’t what would be best for them or the life they would want to start.

She had never had never been to New York before, not even America. Not many West Indians moved to America until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 ended racial quotas and people were able to move freely on their own accord. However, her parents had their lives rooted in Trinidad at the time and just didn’t have the ability or money to leave unless she did it on her own. Also, chronic unemployment in the Caribbean Islands had been on the rise for much of the 80s, reaching 17% in 1987.

Therefore, Deokie never really had the motivation to move until then. “When we got married, we knew we had to make a new start. We wanted to see what the American Dream was about,” she said. She and her husband got word from a friend of a friend that there was a way the two of them could move to the states and find a life there. So, the two of them packed up their life and got on a plane to New York City, leaving everything and everyone they knew behind just a month after they got married. It was one of the hardest and scariest moments of her life, but she knew she made the right one. “It was very scary. We had nowhere to stay, didn’t know who or where we were going by. We just took a chance,” she said. They moved into a small apartment and her new husband found a job with a construction company. Deokie, not skilled in any profession, was stuck doing any job she found. She worked in laundromats, as babysitters, and housecleaners; anything that would make a little bit more money to help.

Then, unexpectedly Deokie found out she was pregnant just one month after starting her new life in America and she was terrified. They were barely financially stable to support themselves, let alone another person. Their landlord forced them to move out because they said another person will take up too much water and electricity so they moved to another one-bedroom apartment in the same neighborhood. “It became more difficult when I had my oldest daughter, Debbie,” she said. “It was difficult because I was also babysitting other children and I had to drop her off at another babysitter while I went to work. We didn’t have a car so we’d have to get up at 5 in the morning to take the bus. My husband had to take 3 buses to get to work. It was a very challenging period in our lives. However, when I had my second child in 1998, I stayed home.”

Deokie celebrating a birthday while pregnant with her first child, Debbie

Adjusting to life here was also a struggle. The couple settled in Richmond Hill, Queens which is where they still reside today. When asked about the kind of people who lived there she responded, “Mostly people from the Caribbean, from Guyana. I think was better to move here because I felt more comfortable to live with people of my own kind.” According to The Newest New Yorkers, most foreign-born residents in Richmond Hill originated from Guyana (31%), India (16%), and Trinidad and Tobago (8%). After the 60s, most Trinidadians settled in either Brooklyn or Queens, with those of African descent settling in Brooklyn and those of Asian Indian, like Deokie, in Queens.

Top NYC Neighborhoods Trinidadians settled in

However, they still had to “Americanize.” She forced herself to speak a little differently than from her Trinidadian dialect so she wouldn’t have an accent. There were a lot of things she had to do “the American way” so she could be equal with everyone else.

“I trained myself among the American people and I just tried to talk like them. I worked for many of them so it wasn’t that difficult. However, when I’m around people from home, I unconsciously revert back to my talking with my accent.”

After so many years of trying to assimilate, Deokie began to feel like she was losing her own culture and what she grew up learning. There were no Diwali festivals or Carnival celebrations like back home. There was a huge sense of belonging and community in Trinidad, something very different from Queens.

“I feel like I lost a lot of my culture after moving to America. We tried to keep it up, but it became very difficult and we somehow lost it along the way. Everyone here is too absorbed in working and they don’t have time to learn about and appreciate your culture anymore.”

There were also some times where she really wanted to leave and go somewhere else. One big issue they had was adjusting to the weather. The winters in New York were extremely cold and it was hard to get used to that from living on a tropical island for almost 30 years. It was also difficult to keep in contact with her family back home in Trinidad. “Very few people in Trinidad had a phone at that time, like Dave’s parents. We had to call by their neighbor to relay a message to his parents that we would call on a specific date at a specific time to talk to them,” she described to me. However, the hardest part about living here, was not being able to go back home when they were undocumented. There were so many important moments she missed, birthdays, weddings, and unfortunately deaths.

Even though Deokie endured all of these hardships, she never regretted moving to America. To her, America was so much better than Trinidad in many ways, and the life she built here could not compare to her childhood. “My life is more successful here because the things that I have done here, I wouldn’t have been able to achieve them if I was still living in Trinidad. America is more advanced, in technology, the people. You learn so much more. They do not have the diversity like New York has.” Trinidad is mostly made up of Afrikans (43%) and East Indians (36%). It was a very heterogenous atmosphere, where as New York City was a melting pot for almost every culture and ethnicity in the world.

One thing that was always on her mind was going back to school. She wanted to, but she knew she had to give that up to put her children first. Both of her daughters went to St. Mary Gate of Heaven and The Mary Louis Academy, catholic schools for elementary and high school. “We believed that the catholic education system was better than the public system in Queens. For the atmosphere, the behavior, and the education, we wanted the best for both of them. Even though it was more money, we sacrificed and payed that.” Although, now her eldest daughter is already done with school, and her youngest is in college. She’s still thinking about going back to get her college degree.

Deokie and Hemanchal at their second daughter’s (Denisha) high school graduation in 2016.

Deokie and Hemanchal at their first daughter’s (Debbie) high school graduation in 2009.

There were a few big moments that marked her finally settling into her life in America. One of them was her parents coming to visit her for the first time. All of her family had stayed in Trinidad because no one had the motivation to leave. She was the first

Deokie with her mother and daughter

one to have the courage to do it. So when she finally did move here, she became a gateway for other people to visit and see what America was really about. She was very proud to show her parents her new life. It was the first time they ever traveled out of the country, so it was also the first time they took an airplane. Another big moment was becoming a citizen. According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, to qualify for naturalization, one must be a permanent resident of the US for at least 5 years, having qualifying service in the U.S. Armed Forces, or if you are the child of a U.S. citizen.

Deokie’s parents (left) and mother-in-law (right) in New York for the first time

There were a lot of things she missed about Trinidad: the food, the people, the music. It would always be home to her, but she made these sacrifices because she knew there was more out there. Her children are the most important thing in her life and if they can grow up in an easier world than she did, that’s all that mattered to her. Like many other immigrants who came to this country, it took a lot of courage give up everything you knew for a dream of an unknown life. It took a lot of work and hard times, but she accomplished what she wanted, building an entirely new life from nothing.

“I think I made a very good decision in moving to America. It is a better place for me and for my family. If we were living in Trinidad, I don’t think they’d have the opportunities they have now. to meet and see different cultures and people. The exposure to the real world and technology, it wouldn’t have been like that if they were living in Trinidad. Despite the fact I have doubts about certain things, America is still a great place to live.”