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Writer's pictureBerwick Augustin

Immigrant Teen

IMMIGRANT TEEN

by Berwick "Underscore" Augustin


Migrated from Haiti to Miami

Dreamed of helping family get out of misery

But lived a nightmare of being a refugee without refuge

Scared because life is being swallowed by despair

black, immigrant, and language impaired

Triple minority

Marginalized in the margins of inequality


I felt like the 80s hated me

Few months in, I’m ready to go back to Haiti

Center for Disease Control told the world

My people carried HIV/AIDS, the lies swirled

Into rumored that we eat cats and carried tuberculosis

A crisis that avalanched into cultural psychosis


Savage mistreatments from misinformed blacks

White America’s whips of injustice slicing our backs

Comforted by unemployment and isolation

It felt like a sin to be Haitian

Chastised like second class heathens

Might as well be living in Hades

Life of a middle school immigrant from Haiti

Living in Little Haiti in the 80s.



Berwick has authored multiple books including the book of poem "Numbered Words"

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