Jacques Toussaint
Monologue
I moved to the United States when I was 10 years old at the beginning of the fifth grade, following my mother and her job at the United Nations. Ever since then, my life and culture has been changing to create the person that I am today. When I first arrived, I did not speak nor understand a single word of English and had a hard time for the first few years.
Eight years have passed since that and now I’m attending college in the city; a place where I can practice and maintain my second language while meeting new people from all around the world with backgrounds as colorful as mine. My father is a mix of Moroccan and French while my mother was born and raised in the ivory coast, a small country in western Africa near Ghana and Togo. I grew up with that heritage in France, and it was already colorful. So when I moved here, and I was a French, Moroccan, and Ivorian mix I stood out like a sore thumb in the small suburban new jersey town I moved to. I was quickly known around the mostly Jewish community but managed to integrate myself in the town despite the many cultural differences.
Now I have lived in New York and am enjoying it very much. I get to meet people of familiar backgrounds and have managed to even find people from the region the village I grew up from in France, which only had a population of about 500. Although my move here was recent, I feel like this is where I want to be and where culture thrives, clashes, and evolves constantly.
Of course, I am proud of my heritage and who I am. I’ve come a long way to become who I am and I’m glad I ended up being who I am today.
