Hi, my name is Siawaa Antwi and above, is Wilmington, DE. When asked where I’m from, I always find it as a tricky question because I don’t really have a feeling of “home” attached to any city. I was born in Livingston, NJ and stayed there until 2008 when my family & I moved to Newark, DE. We’ve made our way through various areas of Delaware but stayed in Wilmington the longest. From the end of my seventh grade year up until now, I’ve called Wilmington, DE my home.
I’ve lived closest to the inner city of Wilmington for just about the total time that I've been here. While the convenience of public transportation and corner stores has been something to appreciate, the ever growing violence has strengthened my desire to get as far from the city as I can. Every summer, so many young lives are taken and it’s truly devastating. It is amazing how the inner city can be so run down, policed and dangerous but just a few miles out, there’s beautiful half a million dollar homes with families that never experience anything near the hardships that we do. This narrative is common and intentional and I really hope that one day soon, the minority population of African Americans & Hispanics will be treated with the respect that we never deserved to be stripped away from us.