Reflection & ConclusionÂ
In my booklet tour of East Harlem’s 116th street, I wanted to take the audience to a place that was familiar and personal to me, while including the topic of gentrification.
Being from a tejano neighborhood, growing up in a latina household, I have the staple memories of a Mexican-American child. Those memories include waking up to sweet bread or walking downtown to buy a bag of pan dulce for desert. I moved to North Carolina and half-way through my childhood I lost that part of my culture. As I did other parts when I moved to a mostly white town where there was no panderias and just speaking Spanish in public was frowned upon. When I moved to New York I found in East Harlem those old memories in hispanic bodegas. This was my reason for choosing my location, topic and pictures.
I wanted, as a guide, to show that cultural connection from an individual to a community. And then I wanted to show the threat of gentrification to these connections. While I feel I could have done more, I think no matter how my project ended up I would have always felt that I could have done more because this issue and topic is one that can’t be placed into one or two little projects. However I am still content with the end result. Gentrification is something I believe is important to understand on an economic level and part of that is understanding the possible outcomes of what it can do to our community.
Working on this project it was somewhat easy to give the direction but going in depth about the specific locations and the meanings required more work than I originally thought, though I believe I managed my time well.
