Piotr Kowalski came to America in 1986 when he was four-years-old. He's from Poland and part of strikingly unheard from groups of immigrants. He's from the new-millennia generation of naturalized citizens, and he's here after fleeing one of the largest radioactive disasters in history. Times are rough, man," Piotr Kowalski, 25, sighs and heavily drops onto his futon in a forward slump, shoulders hunched low.
[...] As soon as they arrived, Kowalski was often missing school in order to translate for his mother at various agencies and meetings. “That's probably where I learned English,” he says. picked it up quick, being young. I learned it in three or four months.” As Kowalski grew older, his ethnicity affected him at school, where everyone was ethnically-divided. He remembers the tension starting as early as third grade, when “fighting became part of growing The Polish, Irish, Blacks, Puerto Ricans, and more would gang up and fight each other. [...]
[...] But he sometimes has a defeatist attitude. He gets discouraged and stressed-out easily, and sometimes sinks into depression, drinking and smoking marijuana to calm his nerves. felt like jumping in front of a bus today,” he says. Kowalski is also a reminder of the often forgotten population of new European immigrants. They are often treated as a regular American-born white. But they're different, because they came here with nothing, learned a whole new culture, and fought discrimination throughout history. Kowalski says he will never forget his [...]
APA Style reference
For your bibliographyOnline reading
with our online readerContent validated
by our reading committee
