In Part 1 of this series, we met Military B.R.A.T. Kennedy Brown as she moves from New York City to Georgia, and now to Texas.
Transitioning is never easy. Especially for Kennedy Brown, who moved from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Columbus, Ga., and now to Texas. Here, they had to move to the Fort Hood Army Base located near Killeen, Tx.
DEEP SOUTH
“Texas is like its own country,” Brown explained. “I have never felt so different from everyone in my life.”
Brown moved from what was a fairly diverse population to a little heavier black community, with whites having the second most. She is in the category of “Mulitracial (Hispanic).” That is one of the smallest percentages of people within that city.
It’s not that she couldn’t find friends, it’s the cultural differences she experienced from New York and Georgia. Brown went from the South of the United States to the Deep South of the United States.
People are either wealthy or chasing money. Brown has seen huge houses within Texas, and she has seen people struggle to live. She has experienced many accents too, from a deep country accent to a plain U.S. accent.
Most of the people spoke a different type of slang, which was hard for her to get used to.
“I heard of lots of slang like, ‘Howdy’ or ‘Dadgum,’” Brown said.
It was never easy for her, but she did everything she could to fit in. Being the lightest skin color wasn’t a problem, guys found her attractive. It was her talk that made everyone she spoke to wonder where she was from.
It went from, “Are you from New York?” to “Are you Mexican?” Not once has anyone seen her as the same because everyone she knew mostly grew up together in that area.
BROWN AND TEXAS BARBECUE
What Brown expected for food was not what she saw in Texas. The cuisine is heavier in BBQ than Georgia, simply because of the size difference. What it’s called around the world is “Texas Barbecue.”
She lived in Central Texas which is one of the four types of barbecue in Texas. This is where Texas Barbecue began, right in the heart of Texas. For a newcomer like her, she had to try it for the first time.
Brown, from living in New York never really had much different than pizza, seafood and the main one: home cooked meals. However, now that her family moves often it isn’t easy for her to get those home cooked meals as much.
Eventually, she ended up enjoying the BBQ and felt as if she could tolerate eating that on a consistent basis. As for living in Texas, she just couldn’t get the feel for the unbearable heat or the culture of the people.
“The heat was like 100 degrees or more everyday, and the people just didn’t care for someone like I would. It was like everyone was for themselves unless they were family,” she says.
READY FOR A NEW PLACE
No matter what, that one year of living in Texas was a tremendous hardship for Brown. She spent her last year of middle school in a new place. She experienced enough in that year that she wanted to move.
It was now time for a new adventure in a new state, with an extremely different culture.
Check out Part 3 of Kennedy Brown’s story tomorrow.
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