#twocultures

Traditions and Assimilation 

American and Latina  

Last fall was the first time our niece, who’s 8 years old, carved a pumpkin for Halloween. Andrea and her boyfriend showed her how one weekend while she was over visiting our parents’ house. While she’s been trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins isn’t a part of her parents’ culture. When she took the jack-o-lantern home, they weren’t sure where to put it or what to do with it. My siblings and I grew up in small, rural towns where our family was one of only a handful of non-white families. I think that played a large role in why our family assimilated very well. Growing up my parents embraced a lot of American traditions. We decorated for Halloween and went trick-or-treating. We celebrate Thanksgiving and have all the traditional foods from turkey to green bean casserole to pumpkin pie. Each year (even now) we get Easter baskets. The tooth fairy came and took all of our baby teeth away. All of these American things, we did. It’s true that my parents infused some of these American traditions with Salvadoran flavor. We never believed in Santa Claus because instead of celebrating Christmas morning, our family had a big Christmas Eve dinner of tamales and then stayed up until midnight to open presents. And New Year's Eve isn’t the same without the 12 grapes you eat while making wishes for the new year in the last minute of the old year. So when I first found out that our niece had never carved a pumpkin until now, I was a little sad for her. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if I should really be feeling sad for me and my siblings? Did our family assimilate too much? Did we miss out on learning about our Salvadoran and Honduran heritage? Should we have been celebrating those holidays in addition to American ones? I couldn’t even tell you what traditional Salvadoran and Honduran holidays are. This is something I have always struggled with. I have never felt Latina enough. I relate very strongly to being a child of Latino immigrants and all that means, but for me to personally claim the identity of Latina sometimes feels disingenuous. I don’t speak Spanish fluently. My husband and closest friends are white. When I told my doctor in our first meeting I was Latina, she was visibly surprised and pointed out that our skin color was roughly the same. She’s white.  

A part of me feels like I missed out on my chance to connect to our culture. With our parents moving, celebrating the major American holidays is going to be hard enough. I know I could make an effort to learn more about our culture and the history of what it’s meant to be Latina in the U.S., but I don’t know that I will. And maybe embracing my child of immigrants narrative should be enough for me to feel confident about my Latina credentials. Afterall, Latinos come in all shapes and shades. Our stories are all different and who’s to say one is better than the other.

Latinx American

I think when you’re an American of color and you have two cultures, you have double to prove. The discussion of this topic actually gets me angry every time I start to delve into it more and more. I’ve actually attempted to write this several times. When I read the accounts of my sisters’ experiences as a Latina American, I reflected on my own and I noticed the same constant in each one: not Latina enough or not American enough. And to me, why are Americans expected to look and act a certain way? Why do we have to assimilate? And as I think about it more and more my answer always goes back to white people. They want us to speak their language, wear their clothes, and celebrate all their holidays. Then when we do, they still see us as foreign.

It wasn’t until I went to school that I started to notice other people were seeing me differently from other classmates. It wasn’t hard to stand out though being 1 of maybe 2 or 3 Latinx kids in a small classroom filled with white kids. They asked things like, “what are you?” “are you Mexican?” “what’s insert word here in Spanish?” All of this was annoying and confusing. What do you mean what are you? Has no one ever heard of any other Spanish-speaking country besides Mexico? And I don’t speak Spanish fluently, so please don’t put me on the spot. Why were people assuming I was a certain way just because of the way I looked? Why couldn’t they assume I was born right there in Indiana? And why didn’t they think I spoke English primarily and fluently? I went my whole school career being in ESL (English as a Second Language). I’ll never forget getting pulled out of class to go to a small room with some lady to tell her what each object was on the flashcards she was showing me; and I’ll definitely never forget when she was impressed with one of the words I knew and me being so confused because this was shit I already knew that I thought was common knowledge. My parents raised me in America just like every other kid in that class, and these white teachers were confused cause I was a brown girl who fit in with the white kids.

All this pressure of being one of the token Latinx kids in this elementary school class made me try harder to be as American as I could. I didn’t hang out with any Spanish-speaking kids. I refused to say anything in Spanish, because that would require the right pronunciation, and I didn’t need anyone making comments on how I said things. I walked the walk and talked the talk. Even when I was on my very best American behavior, wearing my Powerpuff Girl shirt and playing their sports, I still wasn’t American enough. One day, a teacher paired me with a new student who spoke only Spanish and dubbed me his translator, for days, until they finally got an adult to work with him. Let me tell you, I felt sorry for both of us. For a long time I just wanted to be like everyone else around me. I wanted to go to school and learn. I didn’t want to be singled out, and I didn’t want to talk about my family life and whether or not my mom makes tacos a lot. Sorry to say, but white people made it annoying to be myself.

As I grew up, I yearned more to be like the Latinxs I saw and spent time with. Everyone in my family: tios, tias, cousins, grandparents, they all spoke Spanish to each other and to me, and I spoke to them in English. When I got to high school, there were a lot of older, beautiful Latina girls that you knew right away when you looked at them that they were Latina, they were themselves; and I was over here getting asked if I was from India. Living between two cultures can be an identity crisis, especially living in a country where everyone has already put standards on you. I didn’t want to be in between.

My parents came here from El Salvador and worked harder than anyone I’ve ever known to raise their family in a country where we could be whatever we wanted to be. We’re lucky to be in between and to have knowledge on both cultures. It helps us educate those who aren’t, hopefully creating a less ignorant environment. I’ll always be thankful for Selena Quintanilla, a Latina American who taught us to use both our cultures to our advantage to make our dreams come true. I’m proud of who I am, I’m proud of my family and where we came from; and I stand by my sister on being Latinx before being American.