Marina Budhos

Between the ages of two and four, I lived with my family in a modest shingle house in Hollis, Queens—a neighborhood bordering the wealthy enclave of Jamaica Estates, where Donald Trump grew up. One day when I was a teenager, feeling nostalgic, my brother and I went to take a look at our old place. An elderly man answered the door. Before we knew it, he had launched into a tirade about how the neighborhood was going downhill. “It’s all brown, all brown people,” he said, waving his hand toward the elementary school.