Reseda: The Struggle of Balancing Cultures
For Uriel Garcia, a resident of Reseda and the son of immigrants, something as simple as going out to dinner with family can become a challenge.
“When I try to take my parents out to eat in different restaurants from other countries, they’re not used to it,” Garcia said. “So they don’t know what to do about it, like how to eat it or what the food tastes like.”
Second-generation immigrants in the U.S. can find that being part of multiple cultures is sometimes difficult to balance. For Garcia, this disconnect is something he experiences often.
“I’ve grown up with a Mexican culture my whole life and it was nice experiencing something new with my friends that I made,” Garcia said. “But trying to bring that home with my family wasn’t so easy, and they’re not so open to it, but they still try.”
Another part of balancing cultures is how someone speaks. In Reseda, nearly half of the children speak Spanish at home, but the number drops by almost 10% among adults, according to Census Reporter. Garcia speaks Spanish at home but said he notices he talks to his parents in English more than he used to and it has affected his Spanish.
While Garcia was born in the U.S. and has lived in California for his entire life, he doesn’t think American culture defines him because of everything he has experienced.
“My culture is important to me, but I feel like I grew up around so many different cultures,” Garcia said. “A majority of my friends are Asian, Korean, Vietnamese, or Filipino, and I’ve got to experience every bit of that.”
Garcia lives in a household of four people, which is one more than Reseda’s average of three people per house, according to Census Reporter.
Of his four family members living there, Uriel Garcia is the only one who was born in America. Garcia’s family migrated to the United States from Mexico in the early 1990s. A little less than half of Reseda’s population is foreign-born and a quarter of them migrated from Mexico, according to Census Reporter.
Garcia is also a student at Los Angeles Pierce College, which puts him in with a group of about one-third of Reseda’s population who do have some college education, according to Census Reporter.
“I feel like a lot of families that do live around here, they’re immigrants and they came here from another country,” Garcia said. “A lot of my friends are Vietnamese and live around the same area, their parents migrated here from another country. And we have a lot of neighbors that are Latino and came here.”
Garcia said it feels good to be part of the population with a college education.
Like most of Reseda’s residents with a job, he drives to work by himself, which takes him about half an hour, which is slightly less than the average, according to Census Reporter.
“I work in North Hills,” Garcia said. “I should leave 30 minutes earlier. But 25 minutes is kind of getting there like right on time if everything’s perfect.”
When asked what he thinks is the biggest issue in Reseda, Garcia said he believes it is homelessness and financial freedom.
In Reseda, nearly 17% of the population lives below the poverty line and close to half of households make less than $50,000 per year, according to Census Reporter.
“Trying to obtain financial freedom, it’s hard,” Garcia said. “Everything’s pretty expensive out here. The cost of living is really high. Even with a college degree, I feel like it’s still not so easy to make it out here.”
Garcia said he isn’t very familiar with the census and wasn’t sure if he’s filled it out in the past. But with the 2020 census coming up, he said he plans to participate in it.
In the future, Garcia hopes to work in a job helping people.
“My life goals are either to work for LA City Fire or LA County Fire Department,” Garcia said. “And if that doesn’t work out then I want to be a registered nurse, maybe in the future, a nurse practitioner as well.”
