Having grown up in New York City, I was often instructed by my parents throughout the 80s and early 90s to avoid some of this city’s most notorious areas, many of which were located in the borough which I have called home for the last six years, Bushwick, Crown Heights, East New York, the most famous of them all, the legendary, “do or die” Bed Stuy. My parents’ perception of Brooklyn as a place where one only ventured to get mugged lived on past the borough’s recent period of revitalization. For example, upon my return to New York in 2003, they were shocked when I said I’d be moving to Brooklyn instead of our Jamaica Queens homestead. I can still hear my mother’s thick Haitian accent indignantly pronouncing “BooooooKleeen,” before punctuating her derision by sucking her teeth. My father, a New York cabbie for over thirty years, offered his expert advice in the form of intermittent shoulder shrugs, head shakes, and patting his hands to signal he’s wiping them of this matter, all of which were meant as elaborations of his main point, “I wouldn’t do it if I were you.” Mom and Dad were unwilling to believe that during the 90s Central Brooklyn’s catchphrase had evolved from “Do or Die” to “Rent or Buy.”

Fast forward four years later, when, as I began the process of buying a home, my parents’ anxieties about central Brooklyn’s wild west reputation suddenly seemed to pale in comparison to my own fears regarding a rapidly spreading sub-prime mortgage epidemic, 2007-08’s version of swine flu, that had incited a rash of foreclosures across the country ravaging many African American communities in particular. I remember sitting in my lawyer’s office in March 2008 signing my name on a mound of documents that in all honesty I only had a cursory understanding of. As much as I tried to understand these documents, I couldn’t get past the fact that my name would be attached to such a staggering numerical figure for the next 30-years. “Was I really now responsible for paying this all back,” I remember asking my lawyer, meekly voicing this moment of panic. To which she replied, “Yes, you are,” a direct answer to my question, that did very little to assuage my fears my new residence might become an albatross.

In spite of the internal tensions brewing from the prerequisite first time homeowner belt-tightening I had to do at the time, it was becoming obvious during the first six months in this new home that I was likely to stave off the foreclosure virus. Having dodged that bullet, I suddenly found myself having to consider whether I was equipped to dodge literal bullets.

This anxiety began on October 8 with the murder of Edward Hunt, a city sanitation worker who was shot in front of his home-located a few blocks from mine-as he was heading out to work. Hunt and I were the same age, and we seem to have the same penchant for early hours: he to go to work and me for a thrice a week jog.

Then, this April, a day after my thirty-third birthday, I was moved to send an email to friends that began:

Three times in the last two weeks I’ve stumbled upon the aftermath of some gunplay on Nostrand. The first time was after getting off the A-Train after work I heard a pop that I first thought was a truck, then two consecutive pops and seeing people scurrying for cover on Dean Street between Nostrand and Rogers. The third time was the aftermath of a collision at the corner of Nostrand and Atlantic where a van that was trying to evade cops after doing a drive by ran into the wall of a .99 cent store. The second time is the only one that seemed to have produced a homicide. There have been a few articles in the paper about this shooting, but seeing this one today really struck a chord.

Subsequent shootings in the area have been documented and debated on sites like Brooklynian and I Love Franklin Ave—the Brooklynian gesticulations in particular revealed the outcome of the convergence between “Do or Die” Brooklyn and “Rent or Buy” Brooklyn. One friend took things a step further and began referring to my neighborhood as “The Congo.”These encounters led me to consider whether I was capable of holding my own amidst the competing realities of “Do or Die” and “Rent or Buy” Brooklyn.

One of the sources of comfort that I have discovered as I try mitigating my own presence in this struggle, are the “survivor” narratives of some of my neighbors, Crown Heights’ “Do or Die” veterans. A few months back, I stood mouth agape as a neighbor recanted a story about how the gun battles on Franklin Avenue were once so prolific that if he were out after 10pm, he’d sleep at work, get a hotel, or stay at a friend’s place rather than travel back to his apartment. More recently, I was surprised by the mirth that suddenly overtook my block association’s president, a man who’s lived in the area for over 40 years, as he told a tall tale of regularly having to duck behind cars as he sought to dodge bullets while walking the stretch between Rogers and Nostrand Avenues on Park Place.

I have become intrigued by these “survivor” narratives because they’re very similar to the stories sometimes told by relatives and family friends living in Haiti. While my parents and I never hesitated to exercise our option to postpone a trip to Haiti upon hearing about the slightest unrest, our relatives in Haiti had very little choice but to figure out ways to survive on the island during these last two tumultuous decades. My cousins have their own stories about going to school in the morning with the intention of returning home that afternoon only to be suddenly marooned at a classmate’s house for two-three days while they wait for a violent outbreak to subside. Similarly, as my parents continue deliberating whether or not to return to Haiti when they retire in a few years, I am hearing in their voices echoes of the same temerity underlying my own voice when reflecting on whether I have made the right decision in casting my lot in Crown Heights. Lifelong renters, my parents fears aren’t at all attached to the prospect of a mortgage, but rather, having chosen not to buy in New York, they are wondering whether they will have to do or die in Haiti.

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