On the day of college graduation,I told my friends and family the news:I was leaving the country I had lived in since childhood.''I just need a change,"I told them,but there was more.I was running from heartbreak.My relationship with the United States is the most tough one I have ever had,as a country I loved and believed in did not love me back.     Back in the 90's,my mother brought me from our home in the Caribbean islands to the U.S.when I was 4 years old.She worked as a live-in nanny for two years,playing mommy for white kids whose parents had better things to do.She didn't believe that nanny meant maid,and did whatever was asked of her.She was thirsty to embrace her American dream,hoping that her children would be educated and she might have nannies of her own.     That was our path--get a "good education." When the neighborhoods with quality schools became too expensive for my mom to afford as a single parent,we went across the United States with GreatSchools. net as our compass:New Jersey,elementary school;Texas,middle school;Florida,high school;New York City,private university.      For a long time I survived by covering myself in all kinds of labels so that people would ignore the color1 of my skin,yet I existed on the edge of ugly,ignorant and uncuhured."Black people don't really know how to swim,"a white lady told me when I worked as a swim instructor at my neighborhood's pool."The black children don't like to read very much," I overheard one librarian discussing with another while l sat down reading a book a couple feet away.      I was never able to make America my home.When I stripped myself of the labels painfully one by one,beneath them there is a wounded color1ed woman who refuses to be faceless anymore.My face may be disgusting to some since it bears proof that race continues to be a problem.My hope is that it will force Americans to reexamine their "post--racial" beliefs. The author writes the passage to expect_.
immigrants to get ready for more hardship the US to reflect on how it treats color1ed people her family to understand her decision the black people to reexamine their way of life