Oscar Hijuelos

In the hallway of our building on 118th Street, or mailbox had the name of Basulto instead of Hijuelos on the buzzer, because my parents' names were not on the lease. For years and years we knew that the name should be changed, but somehow couldn't be changed, because the landlord might then pass some judgement on our sustainability as tenants and evict us. Multiply these simple but dislocating experiences by a thousand and know that they are far away and nowhere as vivid in my mind now as they were then, and you can have a vague idea of what it's like to be raised with a feeling of what I would call "second classness."
-Oscar Hijuelos, Cool Salsa