MY ‘MASS.’ MANIA

I was raised by a single mother in Methuen, Massachusetts, on Tenny Street – the street considered the worst in the city. Already, two strikes against me.

My neighborhood was where most of the Latinos in our city lived. There were drug dealers and gangs, teens with babies. Violence was common. Our community consisted mostly of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans (I’m both).

Yes, there was that negative element – that’s true in all communities and social classes – it was just that in the news, that is all you saw reported about us. We were always associated with the negative aspects of the city and never the positive. Any time a Latino was in the news, he or she was being arraigned on criminal charges.

What the press failed to report was that my neighborhood was a vibrant community, full of life and beautiful culture. We were all immigrants who knew one another and felt a strong sense of family. You could hear salsa music and smell the sweet aroma of tostones emanating from our neighbor’s homes.

At school, I always had a feeling of alienation for being Puerto Rican. I’ll never forget the day in high school when a white classmate told me that Puerto Ricans only came to the United States to mooch off of the welfare system.

I later learn that there are more white people on welfare than there are Puerto Ricans!

Although my family was on welfare at times, my mother never took advantage. She came to this country, armed only with a high school education, in hopes of a better life. She later married and had three girls with my father.

When I was 6 years old, he abandoned our family with no money and paid no child support, leaving my mother with no choice but to seek government aid. She eventually got off welfare by working three jobs. After explaining my mother’s dilemma to my ignorant classmate, he apologized.

With the odds stacked against us growing up Puerto Rican in Methuen, it was easy to get lost. For my sisters and I, just knowing how hard my mother worked to give us a better life than she had gave us the strength and inspiration to rise far above the little that society expected of us.

My mother taught us that if we could dream it, we could achieve it – and she was right.

Former Miss USA 2003, Susie Castillo was an MTV VJ. She is also the new face of Neutrogena. Catch her film debut in Disney’s “Underdog,” which hits theaters on Aug. 3.