Emotion
Questions
Answers
[Silence]
Facts
Coincidences
Additional Commentary (Separate from Interviewee Answers)
Family
Age
School Reaction
How Lives Changed
Politicization
Headnotes:
Jaylecia lived in NYC when 9/11 happened. Her school was in the Bronx.
She was a freshman in high school and remembers the day well.
The administration didn't tell the students anything. School continued as normally as possible. But she describes the school as feeling full of panic.
The security guards shouted in the hallways, "We're at war! We're at war!"
Parents rushed to pull their children out of school for the day.
On the other hand, the panic didn't deter her health teacher from making an ill-advised joke about a plane crashing into a building, a joke that Jaylecia didn't understand the context of until she found out for herself what really happened.
She went home during fifth period when it was easy to skip school (it was a lunch period).
No one was home when she got there. Her parents were at work and her sister attended a different school that also didn't dismiss the students. She didn't go back to school once she learned what happened via television news broadcasts.
She said that 9/11 changed her. Before that day, she barely knew anything about politics and what it had to do with her but after the event, she became more aware of politics in the US and took it upon herself to pay attention to the political climate. She recalls how obsessed every news channel was afterwards, all you heard were the words "terrorism" and "Al Qaeda". She also recalls how everyone seemed united soon after the attacks but a few years later it was evident that there was a divide between people once again.
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The Interview
Jaylecia was the interviewer and I was the one being interviewed.
Q: When and where were you born?
A: May 20th, 1992 in Newark Beth Israel.
Jaylecia: "Oh wow you're young." She herself is in her mid-twenties.
Q: Where did you grow up?
A: Maplewood, NJ.
Q: How old were you when 9/11 happened?
A: I was I think nine years old when it happened, in Tuscan Elementary School.
Q: Describe what you remember about 9/11 to the best of your ability.
A: I remember being dismissed from classes, I don't remember any announcement telling us what happened. My dad picked me up and tried to explain to me what was going on but in his broken English it was hard to understand what he was trying to tell me. It wasn't until I got home and turned on the television that I learned what happened. I remember crying for at least an hour. I still didn't really understand it but I knew that people died and that bothered me the most. Almost every channel stopped broadcasting shows in favor of a patriotic message that went out to those affected in the attacks.
My dad told me that he and my mom were on the highway when 9/11 happened. The highway they were on had a good view of NYC and traffic had completely halted because everyone was watching the World Trade Center fall. My grandfather eventually called and told them how it happened. My parents made a U-turn to pick me up from school.
Q: How did you feel about the event?
A: I still didn't really understand what happened but I was sad because I knew that people were dying.
Q: Do you know anyone personally involved?
A: I know some parents of my classmates volunteered to clear the rubble days after the event.
Q: How did you feel about the events that happened?
A: I still didn't pay much attention to the news but when I did it was always talking about terrorism and Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and those were always the three things I heard the most. But being a kid, I never felt truly impacted by what happened.
I never thought about it before, but in the years following 9/11 my dad installed a security gate in the driveway and my parents installed a home security system but I never linked their actions to 9/11 until just now.
Q: How do you feel about the event now?
A: I still feel sad about everyone involved in 9/11, especially those that died. But I also feel sympathy for the people who are Muslims or are mistaken as Muslims (Sikhs), pretty much those of Middle Eastern and Southern Asian descent who still have to face prejudice, discrimination and racism for things they didn't have any part of.
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The Pattern
In both Jaylecia and my cases, the beginning of our stories started out with facts. Generally they began with the age and also locations (I was in Tuscan and she was in high school in the Bronx). These facts are followed by the school reaction to 9/11, and after that comes our reaction (emotions) of what happened mixed in with more facts. Sometimes the coding would overlap at certain parts. For the most part, there was a description of change towards the end of the interviews. The only difference is that mine ended with emotion and hers stopped at the change/politicization.
Conclusion
There was a chain of reactions. 9/11 was THE action. The first reaction was the school's. The second reaction was us. And from our reactions came out our emotions, as well as how much (or how little) life changed after the initial action. The pattern was basically like this:
Fact -> School Reaction -> Personal Reaction/Emotions -> Life Change
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