About Me

My full name is Hope Elizabeth Lawrence, but most people don’t know about my middle name. I was born and raised in Queens New York on October 24, 1988. Most people that I meet for the first time think that I’m Hispanic, Puerto Rican for example, when I’m really half white and half black. Though I’m not Puerto Rican, or “Boricua”, I do like to represent it during the month of June when the Puerto Rican Day parade comes to New York. My parents divorced when I was very young; it was 1991 or 1992, I believe. Between the years 1992-1993, my mother went into a new relationship with my step-father and he raised my younger sister, who is two years younger than me, and me. My step-father also has daughter who is three years older than me and I have always called her my older sister throughout life. Then in August 1994, my mother gave birth to my annoying brother. I have a rather large family and it keeps getting bigger. In 2004, my older sister gave birth to a baby boy whom I love as if he were my own son. On my father’s side of the family, I have about five or six aunts and uncles and about eleven or twelve cousins. One of my female cousins has a six-year-old son while another female cousin has a four-month-old daughter. My grandmother is in her late 80s and my father is the oldest out of eight children at age 60.
When I was younger, I hated my name. Other kids in school would poke fun at it. My mother told me that my father gave me that name when she wanted to name me Sarah. My father decided against that because there is an all African American female college named Sarah Lawrence and he decided to name me Hope. Even now, sometimes I don’t want to tell people my real name because the ones who asked me my name is stranger in public who wants to hit on me. My mother always taught me not to talk to strangers so I would tell the stranger that my name is Elizabeth, which is my mother’s middle name as well, or that my name is Sarah. But I do have nick-names like Hopie, which is what my family calls me, or Josephine, which is what one of my supervisors at work calls me.
I do have a job while I’m I school. I work in C-Town Supermarket on 29th and Broadway in Astoria, Queens as a bookkeeper. I started there as a cashier on September 24, 2006 and I was promoted to bookkeeper sometime in February 2007. I love it there. I picked that place to work because I needed a job and I was familiar with the neighborhood since my old high school is in that area. I do see a few old high school friends and teachers shop there. I even got my older sister to work there since she needs to support herself and her 3-year-old son. C-Town has had its bad times and its good times. Though I live in Elmhurst, Queens, Astoria is a wonderful place to live and work. But Astoria isn’t the only wonderful place in Queens, for those who live in other boroughs like Brooklyn. Another nice place is Middle Village simply because there is a huge cemetery and a crematory. St. Albans is nice and quiet and I love going there on Christmas Eve since it is family tradition for all the Lawrences (that’s my family name) to go to the house where my father, aunts and uncles grew up in and to walk around the neighborhood to see how other residents decorate their homes.