00:00:02 Sowjan
Hello.
00:00:03 Noshin
Hi.
00:00:04 Sowjan
So, you’re Noshin. Do you want to introduce yourself and say a little bit about yourself and talk about your relationship to Jackson Heights?
00:00:16 Noshin
Yeah, sure. So, I’m Noshin as you’ve mentioned. I’m 18 years old, a first year at NYU. My ethnicity is… I’m South Asian, I’m from Bangladesh. I was actually born in Bangladesh. I came here when I was three years old—around three years old—and so since then, when I came to New York City, I started living in Woodside, and then I moved, but I still lived in Woodside. I just moved to another part in Woodside. But it’s, like, right next to Jackson Heights, so I go to Jackson Heights like a lot, especially for, like, grocery shopping or to just, like, find other Brown people to hang out with to be honest.
Yeah, but I guess the Jackson Heights that I know is fairly limited compared to how big Jackson Heights is. I actually didn’t even know how big Jackson Heights is until I joined the Facebook group for Jackson Heights, actually. That’s when I realized that, you know, it’s much bigger than, you know, the Brown section of Jackson Heights, where it’s fairly limited to mostly Bangladeshi people.
Yeah, so it’s been, what, 15 years since I’ve lived right next to Jackson Heights?
00:01:39 Sowjan
Wow, that’s a long time.
00:01:42 Noshin
Oh yeah.
00:01:45 Sowjan
So you said you joined a Facebook group for Jackson Heights? What’s the name of the Facebook group?
00:01:52 Noshin
I’m pretty sure it’s just ‘Jackson Heights Facebook Group’.
00:01:54 Sowjan
Oh, ok.
00:01:57 Noshin
I think there might have been more to it. I’m not sure exactly, but Jackson Heights is definitely in the name.
00:02:02 Sowjan
What prompted you to join that Facebook group? Was it just like a random thing?
00:02:09 Noshin
One of the people I’m friends with on Facebook, she shared a post from Jackson Heights. It was just like a wholesome post about like… I don’t remember exactly, but someone was helping someone with something and he commented on the post that this is why I love the Jackson Heights Facebook Group and I was like, wait, there’s a Jackson Height’s Facebook Group? And I joined it because I was fully expecting—honestly speaking, I was fully expecting it to be full of, like, all Brown people talking about, you know, Apna Bazar, Patel Brothers, but it’s much, much bigger. Yeah, it’s a much bigger area than I thought it was. There’s a lot more people.
00:03:03 Sowjan
Right. How different would you say it was like from your perception? Because you said that you thought that Jackson Heights was mostly Brown people come, but what other groups of people have you realized are in Jackson Heights through this Facebook group?
00:03:23 Noshin
Yeah, the reason why I thought there was only like one…. Like I said, I feel like I’ve been limited to only those places. Jackson Heights is some, like, 20 to 30 streets long, but I’ve been limited to like maybe 10. So because of that, I think that’s why my perspective I’d say is pretty different from what I thought. Very different.
But there’s a lot of Hispanic groups, I would say, and also, like, a fair amount of white people too, which I guess shouldn’t be too surprising, because Woodside—where l live, right next to Jackson Heights—I wouldn’t be surprised ’cause for Woodside, a lot of my neighbors are Hispanic and yeah…. So I guess it makes sense.
00:04:32 Sowjan
OK, that’s cool. So veering off of that just a little bit, you said that you’ve been living in Woodside for about 15 years now, right? And since you’ve been living there, you’ve frequently visited Jackson Heights, right? So you’re familiar with, I guess the Brown side of Jackson Heights.
00:04:56 Noshin
Oh yes.
00:05:01 Sowjan
Is there a difference between the Jackson Heights neighborhoods that you visited when you first arrived, maybe not when you were three years old—I don’t know if you remember how it was like when you were three—but in your earlier years. How has the neighborhood changed? How was it like before when you were younger and how is it like now? Is there a change that happened? Have you noticed anything?
00:05:33 Noshin
Yeah, I have to say that—I actually wrote about this in an essay before and I talked about how I feel like there’s been almost no change in the parts I’ve visited, at least, in Jackson Heights.
You see, maybe the stores, like the name might change but what they sell, I guess, is still the same and everything else about them is still the same. I personally haven’t seen any major changes. There’s the same amount of people. I feel like it’s very crowded all the time, it’s very predictable too. Like, if you want to get good parking, don’t go on Sunday, otherwise you’re going to have a hard time finding parking. That’s been the same throughout the 15 years. Yeah, I feel like, I don’t know. I’ve barely seen any changes in Jackson Heights.
00:06:36 Sowjan
So you’ve never even seen like… At least the couple times that I’ve been to Jackson Heights at the train station, you know the F and E train station. Sometimes I see certain streets or like the sidewalks have been… what do you call it? They’ve been, I guess renovated? I don’t know if that’s the right word but yeah. You’ve never seen… construction to make it, like, “prettier.”
00:07:23 Noshin
I think this goes back to how I feel like my perspective is very limited. In Woodside, there’s definitely a lot of construction. It’s probably in Jackson Heights, but I probably don’t know about it that well. There are some places where you’d see a lot of construction, but I do feel like the constructions have been going on for so long, that’s all I’ve seen. The construction is kind of just like a long board or whatever that just tells you construction is happening and not to enter. It’s been going on for very long. To this day I haven’t seen what exactly is behind it.
00:08:13 Sowjan
By a long time do you mean years or…?
00:08:17 Noshin
Yeah, by a couple of years.
00:08:29 Sowjan
Ok, you mentioned that you mostly saw the South Asian community of Jackson Heights, right? This kind of relates to that, but what is the sense of community like in Jackson Heights for you based on the parts that you’ve interacted with?
00:08:52 Noshin
Yeah, there’s a very strong sense of community. I mean, we always joke about how you never know who you’re gonna meet. The other day, I actually met—I had a friend from third grade and she moved to Bangladesh after third grade. And I met her dad last week at Patel Brothers. So yeah, this stuff happens all the time. You never know. I think every single time you go there, you’ll see someone you’ve met before or someone you’ve met at Jackson Heights before and you just became friends with just because… I don’t know, maybe we were just standing in front of the—I don’t know if you do this a lot but when my mom goes shopping and I have to guard the stuff—guard whatever she’s got so far, like being a security guard—and then I’m just standing there and there will be someone who’s also just kind of standing there. We’ll just have a conversation, and then you might see that person again very soon. So yeah, there will be random people talking to each other all the time or, you see some people from your past all of a sudden, very unexpectedly.
00:10:18 Sowjan
And that’s within the South Asian community that you—
00:10:22 Noshin
Yeah, that I’m familiar with.
00:10:23 Sowjan
Do you ever see any intermingling of the different communities in Jackson Heights? I know that you said that you weren’t really aware of the different groups of people in Jackson Heights before you were in the Facebook group, but at least after you joined the Facebook group, are you more aware of the different types of communities when you physically interact with Jackson Heights?
00:11:02 Noshin
The thing is like I feel like when I go to Jackson Heights it’s almost exclusively the South Asian part mostly for, like, grocery shopping. Or you know, shopping for clothes or something. In the Facebook group when they post and they have like… and the thing is, another reason I feel like that happens is ‘cause when we go there, my parents—we all refer to it as just Jackson Heights. When we say Jackson Heights, we mean exclusively just that part. We’re not even aware of all the other parts of it. But in the Facebook group, sometimes they post pictures of places that they’re near, and I’m like wow, that’s in Jackson Heights? ‘Cause it just looks so different and I’ve never seen that place. So….sorry what was the question? I feel like I trailed off.
00:12:01 Sowjan
It’s okay. After you joined the Facebook group, do you see any hints of the other community groups within the parts that you visit? Or do you think that it’s just still just exclusively South Asian?
00:12:19 Noshin
Yeah, it’s pretty much exclusively South Asian. I mean from time to time you’ll see, like, non-South Asians hanging out, but it’s very rare in my opinion. But then again, like I said, the part that I know of, the part that I frequent, at least, it’s fairly small. If you consider Jackson Heights as a whole, I’m sure there’s a lot more.
00:12:53 Sowjan
Do you have any opinions about the fact that certain parts of Jackson Heights are very exclusive in terms of the community that lives there?
00:13:06 Noshin
You mentioned this before, how New York City is fairly segregated. I personally haven’t seen like a ton of intermingling from there between ethnicities, between groups from where I live. In Woodside there’s a little bit, but still not too much. It’s primarily like I feel brown South Asian groups and Hispanic groups. And then Jackson Heights from the part that I know of, like Jackson Heights itself is fairly segregated, so the part that I know of is fairly Brown. And then even in the Facebook group, if a Hispanic person posts, then it’s fairly Hispanic people like commenting, ’cause even that group part is, I think from the posts that I’ve seen, is mostly Hispanic concentrated. Mostly Hispanic people live there.
My opinion on that…I understand why it happens. It’s because you can relate more closely to the culture. The reason why I feel like it looks very different, from my point of view, is ’cause the cultures are so different. I think people just have a natural affinity to mingle with their own ethnic group.
I think, yeah, it would be nice if there was more intermingling and sharing, but I feel like it might be happening with the younger generations. When I’m out with my friends, not just my parents or family, we don’t go to just the Brown parts of Jackson Heights. We go almost everywhere. We’ll go to like…the other day, we were talking about going to this food truck that’s had a reputation of being really, really good. It’s called Birria Landia. That’s also near Jackson Heights. It’s part of the more Hispanic portion of Jackson Heights that I personally, when I was younger, had never really gone to. So it might be happening, I guess, in a way, but like I said, I can understand why it happens, the segregation part.
00:15:57 Sowjan
But that’s a really cool point that you brought up about the younger generation interacting with the community in a different way from the parents, especially since I guess most of the younger generation are kids who were either born here or they probably came here at a very young age like you did, right? So I guess the parents and the children have a different perspective on the Jackson Heights community and the neighborhoods. Do you want to talk more about that? I think that’s an interesting point that you brought up.
00:16:46 Noshin
When my parents came—well, my dad came first to New York from Bangladesh and… this is probably true for all immigrants, unless you came at an early age, but at around his age, what you’re mostly thinking about is making money, making a living, finding a job.
00:17:17 Sowjan
Surviving.
00:17:19 Noshin
Yerah, surviving. And to do that, like I said, you have a natural affinity to go to places where you’re more comfortable. That’s why he was more attracted to the South Asian groups because it’ll be easier for him to communicate with people. He doesn’t know English that well, when he came here first, so you can talk in Bangla and people are going to understand. And he started off selling fruits, he had a stand, a fruit stand. So, you know, if you can’t speak English that well, and you have to communicate with your customers, it’s not gonna be that easy. So, I feel like that’s probably true for most people. Most older generations, like our parents.
New York City in general was like a haven, almost, for immigrants to come through and find jobs and make enough money to at least survive. And because of that, I feel like that’s why you see more of this segregation. Our parents are coming here and they just want to survive. They don’t have the luxury to think of anything else, and in order to do that, they create their own communities that they’re more comfortable with.
And for us, for the younger generations, for me and my friends, it’s not the same ’cause we don’t have to worry about that stuff as much since our parents took care of it. So we do have the luxury to think of all this stuff, to have fun with school, and all that kind of stuff.
And, since we grew up here, and Queens especially I think I’ve heard somewhere that it’s the most diverse place in the world. So when you go to school it’s not like you only see Brown people, or at least in my case that’s not what I see. We’re more comfortable with diverse places as well, more comfortable than our parents. It doesn’t seem as different or odd to us to venture out of the Brown sphere, out of the sphere we’re comfortable with. That’s why we’re more naturally inclined to you know, go other places, hang out there, and just… you know, it’s normal to us, right?
I think it’s a situational kind of thing. Our experiences are vastly different from, like, my parents—the stuff we had to worry about, the stuff we had the luxury to think about.
00:20:20 Sowjan
That’s a really good point, and exploration of that point as well. I guess I’ll just ask one more question and then we can wrap this meeting up. I wanted to ask, what is the biggest concern you have about the neighborhood? If you have any at all.
00:20:50 Noshin
The biggest concern… Ah, let me see. This is kind of hard because I feel like I’ve been in a bubble right? Especially during the pandemic, I’ve been staying home. I’ve been lucky enough to not think about too many things because almost everything’s been taken care of for me. So I almost forgot about the outside world if I’m being honest. But yeah, I think throughout this interview, I’ve realized that….I mean, it’s not like the biggest concern…OK, I realize that in numbers, Queens might be the most diverse, but because everything is so segregated, it’s almost not. I guess that is a concern-ish, but like I said, I feel like it’s kind of solving itself. We have all these different cultures, right, under our noses, but not everyone gets to experience them because we simply don’t know about it.
And another reason why that’s a concern is because we also don’t know of the problems outside of our own comfort zone. Through the Facebook groups I’ve been more aware of the parts of Queens and Jackson Heights where it’s not as safe, there’s more crime activity. And since we’re more aware of just our comfort zone, where over here it’s not—like, I personally haven’t seen much, it’s not as worrisome, safety wise. I didn’t know about that. If you were to ask me before I joined the group then I would say yeah, it’s pretty safe.
But there’s only a certain group of people who are having to deal with these problems without almost anyone else knowing. It’s hard for them to deal with these kinds of problems cuz there’s only so many people.
Which is why diversity and intermingling or just hanging out and going out of your comfort zone is an important tool on a larger scale.
I think that if that wasn’t a thing, you know just staying in our comfort zones, then everybody would know each other’s problems and issues and it would be easier to solve and deal with.
That was a really long response.
00:24:00 Sowjan
No, it’s OK. It’s OK, thank you so much for giving your time for this interview.
00:24:09 Noshin
Well, this was very enlightening for me, too. I didn’t realize a lot of things until you asked these questions. Thank you.
00:24:17 Sowjan
No, no problem. OK, I guess we will end it here. Thanks again, Noshin.
00:24:27 Noshin
Sure, no problem.
