“I’m torn—I definitely have two separate lives. And my mother appeals to me about my brothers and sisters—it’s usually the younger ones who are doing well in school and the older ones screwing up their lives—‘You have to talk to your brother! You have to talk to your sister!’ But I can’t take over from my mother and raise the family. I don’t know if that’s my role. I wish everyone in my family, back home, could experience college, but they don’t seem to have the aspirations that I do right now. And I wish I could plant those seeds, those aspirations, but I can’t instill in everyone the importance of going further than just staying home in Brooklyn. But I try to help them in a brotherly way as much as I can—whatever I can do.”
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