Listen to Adjunct Professor and writer Kevaughn Hunter who was born in The Bronx and raised in Brooklyn, New York share about living in New Jersey during the pandemic. His family is from the island of Jamaica and he identifies as either Black or African American.

“I remember actually being in class teaching, and I think it must have been the beginning of spring semester, when the news was coming out. This is the earliest memory that I have, because I remember sitting on my desk in an English class and the students were talking about, I think, that the college was thinking about closing or postponing or something and we were like, ‘I don’t think that will happen,’ because it’ll only be maybe a week or two and then we’ll be back. And then we weren’t back for a couple years…”

“…In Jersey when the when the mask mandates were out and if we were to go to a store, pretty much everyone would be wearing something. Especially if we were near Asian areas...I studied Japanese. I went to Japan. This is part of why the mask stuff to me wasn't a bother, because when I was in Japan in high school for example, if someone was sick they wore a mask. It's not like a big deal. So, I never grew up thinking that was a big deal. But, and so, in that same vein people would wear masks and no one really would treat it very differently, because of the area I guess. But then the one or two times we did go to the city in my area in Canarsie in Brooklyn almost no one was wearing masks going into stores, and people were going to like beef patty stores, and like super crowded areas. If you've been to places like that and no one's wearing a mask and it's like okay, well, that's not, some things might spread worse that way…”