The neighborhood I most strongly identify with is the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The Lower East Side is the neighborhood I was born and raised in as a child. But it is more than just a place where I lived. I identify with the Lower East Side because its history and evolving identity reflect aspects of my own identity. This neighborhood is one whose history is unveiled as immigrants from distant shores took up residence in the squalid tenements that fill its narrow streets. I am born to two immigrants and lived in a tenement as a child. Being a part of this neighborhood and its history, I follow in the footsteps of the Irish, the Jews and the Italians before me.

The Lower East Side is a crossroads of people from many walks of life. On the riverside, New York’s underclass is crammed into ugly housing projects that mar the skyline. The remnants of middle class apartments are scattered, bearing their telltale redbrick facades.  A harbinger of material wealth, glass and steel condos signal a new type of migration, one within the borders of the United States.  The unclear socioeconomic character of the neighborhood is what causes me to identify with it strongly. I came from a poor background but my family members are upwardly mobile. I currently am part of an elite cohort of a school meant to serve the proletariat. Like the Lower East Side, I cannot easily characterize or categorize myself.