Dieuner Joseph was born on April 4, 1968 in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti to Lucienne Joseph and Tardieu Joseph. He lived in Haiti with his mother, older brother, and two older sisters while his father worked in a factory in the US. When he was 14 they immigrated to the US and he became a naturalized citizen at 17. Moving to the US was challenging for him and many other Haitian immigrants for many reasons. People disliked Caribbean and African people in New Jersey at the time, which was 1982. My dad says that was one of the biggest challenges of not just him, but many Haitians as well. They were bullied, but couldn’t understand what the bullies were saying because they don’t speak English well enough. Some of them were even assaulted. Also there were many cultural difference that made assimilating into the American life different. My dad arrived in June of ‘82 and had to learn English in three months before school started. English is very different from Creole with the mouth sounds and pronunciation would make it difficult for anyone. The cultural barrier also hindered the “American dream”. America is very different from Haiti and trying to adapt to new social norms made it hard. The last difficulty he told me he had to face was that he didn’t know anyone. His parents worked and his older siblings were in college and so he had to spend a lot of time just doing school work till he met his friends, who are also Haitian immigrants. He went to Elisabeth High School in Elisabeth, New Jersey and graduated and went on to go to Manhattan college for bachelors in Theology and then went to Princeton University for a Master’s in Theology and one in Divinity. He is now a manager of a pharmaceutical company.
