Shot of the Unisphere, the 140 foot-tall steel sculpture in the midst of Flushing Meadows Corona Park. The Unisphere was initially commissioned for the 1964-1965 World’s Honest and has since turn into an icon for the borough of Queens.
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Shot of the Unisphere, the 140 foot-tall steel sculpture in the midst of Flushing Meadows Corona Park. The Unisphere was initially commissioned for the 1964-1965 World’s Honest and has since turn into an icon for the borough of Queens.
Wendy Correa for NPR
This essay was written by NPR reporter Jasmine Garsd
Once you hear about immigration, you little doubt brace your self for a narrative about trauma, struggling and injustice. Which, to be honest, is a giant a part of the truth of immigration. However this week on Code Swap, we’re doing a distinct type of immigration protection. We’re telling a New York story: one which celebrates the gorgeous, on a regular basis lifetime of the immigrant. Code Swap producer, Xavier Lopez and I spent a Sunday interviewing individuals at Flushing Meadows Corona Park, in Queens.
Queens has traditionally been a magnet for immigrant communities, and is without doubt one of the most various counties within the nation. Xavi has a much more genuine declare to Queensdom than I do – he was raised right here. I merely selected it as an grownup, because it was the one place that felt like residence after the house I knew was gone. However no matter how we ended up right here, we each know Queens to be a really particular place, the place over 170 languages are spoken, the place you may have Colombian baked goodies for breakfast, momo for lunch, and go watch a South American rock band for dinner.
Left: Freddy involves the park to referee volleyball video games along with his daughter. Proper: Flor Villa (proper) and her sister take a break from taking part in. They got here to the U.S. from Ecuador two months in the past.
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Flushing Meadows Corona park is on the middle of Queens. It is sometimes called the “pulmones” – the lungs. And people lungs are enormous: the park is sort of 900 acres. Non-New Yorkers is perhaps aware of its iconic Unisphere, a 140 foot-tall chrome steel illustration of the Earth, (spoiler: on this episode Xavi professes his timeless love for the monument.) Tennis lovers know the park as host to the U.S. Open. Followers of countless struggling realize it as residence to the Mets stadium.
The park is a universe unto itself, crammed with remnants from two historic World’s Gala’s. There is a large lake, a theater, a merry-go-round, a zoo, a museum, and numerous fields used for cricket, soccer and volleyball.
Shot of the volleyball courts at Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Many Ecuadorian immigrants come right here on the weekends and at night time to play volleyball and Ecuavolley, a regional model of the sport.
Wendy Correa
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Shot of the volleyball courts at Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Many Ecuadorian immigrants come right here on the weekends and at night time to play volleyball and Ecuavolley, a regional model of the sport.
Wendy Correa
However what makes this park particularly significant to Xavi and I, are the individuals who come right here: immigrants from all walks of life – taxi drivers, development and restaurant staff, all having fun with their usually solely break day. “To me Flushing Meadows is the heart of the entire city,” says Xavier. He calls it “a third space” – someplace that is not a crowded residence, or work or faculty. “It is a third house for a neighborhood that’s more and more in want of it, throughout a time when third areas are more and more tough to seek out.”
Left: Javier Juarez holding the trophy from his current soccer match win. His underdog staff, “London” gained the championship the morning we spoke with him. Proper: One other participant kisses their medal.
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Xavi and I are each immigrants from very completely different walks of life. Xavi got here from Ecuador at 8-years-old in 2002, proper firstly of the Bush period. I additionally got here to the U.S. in 2002, however as an adolescent, from Argentina, following a nationwide financial collapse. Neither of us made the migrant trek, however we did expertise lots of the themes of getting to depart residence, the craving and the nostalgia.
So for this episode, we went trying to find the joyful facet of the immigrant story in Xavi’s neighborhood park, the place we spent a day speaking to immigrants from everywhere in the world. We met a younger Ecuadorian boy using the merry-go-round for the primary time, a Sikh cricket participant who drives Uber through the week and daydreams of his first trip, and a Mexican soccer participant whose unlikely victory led to a mirrored image on an immigrant’s first 12 months in New York.
The Lion Champions, the cricket staff.
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As a reporter, I work with a variety of knowledge. I can repeat the immigration numbers by coronary heart: the statistics on the U.S.’s determined want for staff, that are at odds with the polls on American voters’ rising anti-immigrant rhetoric, each of which coincide with a historic displacement of individuals from world wide.
I used to be lately reporting on this displacement, out within the mountain vary that divides California from Mexico, the place migrants are more and more mountaineering a treacherous path to keep away from stringent new immigration legal guidelines.
Picture of Maykel Paguay on high of the lion for his first experience on the Flushing Meadows Park carousel. Maykel had been ready for this carousel experience for over a 12 months.
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It was a sweltering summer time daybreak when a mom approached me, sobbing. Her toddler appeared to be handed out close to her, on the bottom. I do not keep in mind their names, solely their faces. They had been from Ecuador. They had been right here to hunt asylum. That they had been strolling all night time over the rugged terrain. The boy was having a tough time staying awake. He had the haunting, drained grimace of an previous man. He had been bitten by an insect within the eye and it was swollen. They wanted assist.
Kids order ice cream on the park.
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Border Patrol brokers ultimately arrived to take the household away. And I used to be left with a single second of their life story: a snapshot of anguish and violence. That’s usually all I get to inform as a information reporter.
Within the days and weeks after I met them, I believed so much about how the immigration story is a lot greater than that one second. I would by no means hear from that household once more, however their lives will unfold as life does. They are going to get a job. Discover a place to reside. Make pals. Construct an existence that will likely be wildly completely different than something they may have imagined for themselves, in good and dangerous methods.
Brian, a younger skater, takes a break from the warmth. He says lately most of his pals are too busy to return right here, however he likes to skate alone along with his headphones on.
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On one other current Code Swap episode, we seemed on the final 100 years of immigration on this nation. However in case you spend sufficient time in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, you can see it, too, tells the historical past of U.S. immigration. And about how way more pleasure there may be within the immigration story than the headlines enable: as an illustration, lately, volleyball courts have popped up all through the park, a testomony to a wave of Ecuadorians and that tradition’s love of the sport. As Xavi places it, “there are a few things that are certain in this life: death, taxes, and Ecuadorians playing volleyball.”
It was on these courts that we met Flor, a younger Ecuadorian mom who got here to the U.S. somewhat over two months in the past. She used to reside on a farm, however lately she spends her time in a room they lease close by, taking good care of her two babies whereas her husband works. Enjoying volleyball on weekends is her one second of respite.
Bianey Garcia pictured right here on the park. Bianey is an activist working for Make the Street NY, an immigrant rights group. Bianey was on the park internet hosting a BBQ for the LGBTQ+ neighborhood in Corona.
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As Flor instructed us about how a lot she misses residence and the way a lot she loves this park, I seen her digging her fingers into the grass nostalgically. Within the twilight, as she spoke, I could not assist however take into consideration the mom I had met within the desert months in the past along with her struggling younger boy, and marvel in the event that they made it to the place they had been heading — distant from that second of sheer terror, from the reporter with the microphone. Maybe they, too, lastly received a day as beautiful as this one – an opportunity to relaxation, to play, to run their fingers via the grass of this unusual new land they had been hoping to name residence.
Vacationers that come to the park normally come via the subway entrance at Mets – Willets Level, however the immigrant neighborhood normally comes via this entrance on the Corona facet of the park.
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This episode was hosted by B.A. Parker, reported and produced by Xavier Lopez and Jasmine Garsd, and edited by Courtney Stein and Leah Donnella. Our engineer was James Willetts.
