Vee Edwards (Basketball, Harper College) grew up in Chicago. HelloNation asks student athletes one question about the place that raised them and records the answer on camera. This is Vee Edwards’s, in full.
The question
If someone had never been to your hometown, how would you describe its character and reputation? What makes it unique, memorable, or influential?
The answer, as recorded
Transcript. What follows is a transcript of the video above, in Vee Edwards’s own words. It has not been rewritten, and no part of it was drafted for them.
What's up, Hello Nation fam? Vioce Guinea here, and this is a great question. I had to ponder a few days to think about this answer. If someone had never been to the West Side of Chicago, how would I describe its character and reputation, and what makes the West Side of Chicago unique, memorable, or influential? I would describe the West Side of Chicago as a place that builds character in many, many, many different ways. It built my character, it built a lot of my friends, my family. It's just a place where you get it how you live. If you don't know what that means, it's you get it from the ground up. You start from zero, and then you build yourself up. As a child, sometimes you don't have it all. As adults, sometimes you don't have it all, but then y'all both build together, and you make a name for yourself. I've seen a lot, a lot of people come from the West Side of Chicago and be very successful, starting with my mother and my father. They came from really nothing, but had a decent two-parent household and made a name for themselves. My grandparents did the same thing, moving from different places and come to Chicago, because this is where you build your character. You don't really know who you are until you go to Chicago. What makes the West Side of Chicago memorable for me is just being there for a long time. Once you get there, it's hard to leave in a great way. You just don't want to leave. It feels like home. It's very influential to me and to others, because you see a lot of people steal Chicago's lingo, steal our styles, even you hear their music sometimes, the way we pronounce words. I just love the West Side of Chicago so much, and this is a great question. Appreciate it.
Recorded by HelloNation as part of its athlete voices program and published by Hello Newswire, HelloNation’s good news newswire. The words are the speaker’s own.
Reported by Hello Newswire.