April 2002
Produced by Stacy Abramson
Hosted by Rosie Perez

About

Youth Portraits seeks to give voice to young people who have been in prison — to give them the tools to tell their own stories, to teach them an important set of skills, and to empower them to speak up about their own experiences.

The program is an educational partnership between Sound Portraits Productions and Friends of the Island Academy, a community-based organization that provides educational and counseling services to young people after their release from Rikers Island. Through the program, five young people from Friends worked side by side with Sound Portraits producers to create short documentaries about their lives.

The spot where Ariel’s friend Knowledge got shot in the Bronx. Photo: Andrew Litchtensein

The Stories

Introduction by Rosie Perez

Ariel Corporan

Home: Bronx, NY
Age: 21

“It’s very dead in the morning, so you don’t get too many sales unless you catch the nine-o’clock, ten-o’clock rush, when they come back from dropping their kids off at schools — you know, some mothers and fathers are crackheads. They would drop their kids off at school, come back, and score with us.”

Ariel does outreach on Rikers Island through Friends of Island Academy and works at –, a bar in SoHo. He is a full-time dad to his six-month-old son, Dei-Jean.

Yovani and friends walking past Prospect Heights High, where they went to school. Photo: Andrew Litchtensein

Yovani Whyte

Home: Brooklyn, NY
Age: 20

“I started getting a record when I was fourteen for little stuff, misdemeanors. Then when I hit sixteen: robbery. I kept robbing people. I kept doing a whole bunch of things I shouldn’t have been doing. And when I was seventeen, me and this girl cut this girl in my school, and they locked me up.”

Yovani recently finished an internship at Black Entertainment Television and is now a peer educator at Friends of Island Academy.

Bernard and his three-year-old son, Tyreik, at home in the Bronx. Photo: Andre Lambertson

Bernard Skelton

Home: Bronx, NY
Age: 24

“I got out. It was December second or third. They let us off at Queens Plaza. It was a clear night. I think it was a full moon. And my mom met me at the train station at Flushing. And I just remember walking down that block, not knowing where we lived or what my apartment looked like, and just breathing fresh air.”

Bernard has been a Big Brother to kids with developmental delays in Queens and is now a peer educator at Friends of Island Academy. Most importantly, though, he is a family man, dedicated to his girlfriend, Aliyah, and three-year-old son, Tyreik.

Angie singing Mariah Carey’s “Hero” at Friends of Island Academy talent show. Photo: Andre Lambertson

Angie Sanabria

Home: Manhattan, NY
Age: 18

“We didn’t have a phone in the house, so my mom ran downstairs trying to call my grandmother, wondering what’s going on. And my grandmother didn’t know anything either. So when my mom went back upstairs, she finally saw the note, because I had it in big red letters that said For mom, and she started going crazy looking for us.”

Angie works at McDonald’s and recently auditioned for an R&B group in Queens.

Redd at the Allerton Avenue subway station in the Bronx. Photo: Andrew Litchtensein

André ‘Redd’ Vaughn

Home: Bronx, NY
Age: 21

“I never ever got more than an hour of sleep, because every fifteen minutes they would pull my slot open and say my name. I felt numb. I mean, even if I gave up hope, there would have been nothing I could do because I still would have been in that cell. So I did nothing. There was nobody to love. Everybody I loved was basically on the other side of the world.”

André is a peer educator at Friends of Island Academy. He recently finished a radio fellowship at Sound Portraits Productions and was the teaching assistant for the Youth Portraits Project.

Related Links

• Friends of the Island Academy: http://www.foiany.org/
• Youth Portraits Home: www.youthportraits.org
• Sound Portraits: www.soundportraits.org

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Credits

Project Director/Producer
Stacy Abramsom

Producer
Susan Burton

Story Polisher/Editor
David Isay

Segment Producer (Andrés Story)
David Miller

Production Assistance
Karen Callahan, Matt Power, Jamie York

Educational Consultant
Lisa Pilar Cowan

Teaching Assistant
André ‘Redd’ Vaughn

Music Consultants
Jesse Drucker, James Friedman

Host
Rosie Perez