Ever since my parents split up when I was about two or three, my mom was my primary caretaker. In the early stages of my life, I had my Caribbean side of the family in my presence. But as I got older, I spent more time with my mom’s side of the family that is completly Irish so my Latina and Caribbean identity was slowly fading. I was put into this environment where everyone was white. I felt like I had to embrace my whiteness, my half Irish side of my identity instead of trying to find out more about being Venezuelan and Trini.  I wasn’t able to see my father and that side of the family all lost touch with each other so it was sort of like I had no one to talk to about my heritage. Now looking back on my childhood, I really never embraced being different. I never ever said I was “Latina” because I truly didn’t know anything about Venezuelan culture. I had never been there and I’ve never spoken Spanish besides taking classes in school. Now as I think about my childhood, I truly wish I had taken matters into my own hand and done at least some research about being from Trinidad & Tobago and Venezuela or even reached out to my family on my father’s side to get some answers. But it’s never too late to start. At times I felt proud to be mixed because people would see me and call me exotic and would ask me “What are you?”. In my head, thinking about this question now, I should have replied ” I’m a human” because I was being treated differently because of the way I looked. People wanted to put me in a box but they couldn’t figure out what box to put me in unless I gave them answers. As a twenty one year old, mixed race woman, I can reflect on my past experiences as an outsider and realize that my appearance definitely had a lot to do with how I was treated in the communities I was placed into. At elementary school, I was the only person in my class that had a black background and this affected my self esteem, how I talked to my peers and how I talked to my family. I had this thought in my head that no one would be friends with me if I didn’t try to be more Irish. Or that if I didn’t dress preppy enough, my grandparents would treat me differently. It’s sad to think of this now because I did give in, I was pressured into being more white. If I had embraced being Latina and Caribbean, my life would totally be different now. I think I would be a lot more educated and a lot more confident in who I am because knowing where you come from can change your perspective on life. Now that I’m older, I’m going to make a greater effort to embrace being Latina and Trini because that’s what makes me, me.

K,
I know why you stick around now. It isn’t because you love me, because if you did you would not treat me the way that you do. It isn’t because you just wanted me for my body either, because if that were the case you’d be long gone by now. You stay because I’m so submissive to you. You stay because I’m drawn to every word that comes out of your mouth and because I cling to you so necessarily. You feed off of it. You gain power from my vulnerability. But the more of myself I give to you, the less I have to myself. I am no longer me because of you. Over time I have lost what I love most about myself. Before you, I never took shit from anyone. I was radiant and almighty. But, because I wanted you so bad, I gave you the best of me and now you won’t give it back. Your superiority brings you joy… te has hecho mas hombre y mas fuerte. Y a ti que te importa, if your power means my detriment, so be it.
I hope you realize what you’re doing and you find some other way to protect your fragile masculinity some day.
-Michelle

This is a response to the reading, Dispelling the Sombras, Grito mi nombre con rayos de luz by Ines Hernandez Avila. In this reading, she describes the effects of erasure. She focuses on the roles race/ethnicity and gender in erasure. Her opening quotes that focused on gender got me to thinking about my own life and led me to reflect upon why men behave the way they do.

My poetry response to “Temporary Latina” by Ruth Behar

I, too, question my Latina authenticity/

Though it has made me who I am today/

Raised in a middle-class, privileged Puerto Rican family/

Some may criticize me of becoming “whitened”/

A term I will never identify with/

“You have white girl hair,” they say/

But, “Are you Asian? You have small, chinky eyes,” they also say/

So who am I?

I am Latina, puertorriqueña/

Grew up filling my belly with arroz con gandules/

Celebrating Christmas on Christmas Eve/

Listening to my abuelos yelling out “Merry Chrima”/

The making and passing along of pasteles and coquito/

I am as authentic as the food I eat, as the people I love/

I am never temporary, always permanent/

This Latinidad settled inside of me for eternity.

I found Ruth Behar’s testimonia about her anxieties about being a “temporary” Latina as so relatable and also pertinent to my upcoming paper on the liminality of Latina identity. She said that she never felt comfortable fully self-identifying as Latina because of her light skin and her Jewish heritage. Because of that, she felt that when it came to conversations about expanding the definition for Latino/a, her input wasn’t necessary or productive. I am in a slightly different situation, as I’m only half-Mexican and have only been to Mexico a dozen or so times in order to visit mis abuelos. But still, although I have a heavy ethnic connection to my Mexican roots, there are obvious privileges I must be fully conscious of. Although I agree with Behar on the notion that the term Latino/a should be expanded in order to unite instead of stratify the community, but at the same time I must recognize that my light skin means that being a dominant voice in discussions would mean speaking over latinx people who have a more nuanced view due to their multifaceted identities that include a more prominent racist and xenophobic experience living in the U.S.

But I cannot deny that I haven’t been singled-out for my Latinidad when it was made apparent. The thing is, even if I am not visibly Latina, once I openly disclose my latinidad it becomes a very real and prominent aspect of the way in which others interact with me. When people see me as a ethnically White woman, I am tenacious, respected and driven, but when I am seen as Latina, I am bossy, over-achieving and possessing an agenda. It’s especially hard when navigating certain academic circles, because focusing on topics of misogyny, xenophobia and racism (especially under our current political climate) is just seen as me being a nuisance and overly-political. Sometimes I feel like it is also seen as if my Latina identity is a performance, and that sometimes my peers and professors would just wish I would embrace my “white side” as a means for them to respect me and my academic pursuits more in lieu of having to treat me differently based on my self-proclaimed Latina ethnicity. This is why I want to continue working towards highlighting the insecurities of Latinas that exist in a state of liminality due to their skin color and language, not so that they become the recipients of pity or the subjects of a discourse of ostracization, but rather so that they (or should I say we) have a more cohesive idea of what our role in the Latinx community is (perhaps bridgework?).

The chapter “Snapshots from My Daze in School” by Celia Alvarez was extremely insightful, especially in the way that she analyzes language. She brings up the fact that she was privileged due to the fact that she was a bilingual speaker, and thus could serve as a translator (sharpening her interpersonal communication skills) for her mother, who spoke Spanish, yet still possess the capacity to speak English because of her father. So, she succeeded when she entered elementary school, but she states that this is only due to her English language skills since NYC public schools were not bilingual.

Now, I had a similar situation growing up. I was born in San Diego, where my parents were living in a tiny rental apartment. Living in a city so close to the Mexican border, my parents often spoke Spanish with their friends, at their jobs and in the house. But this was only for the first year of my life in which I was constantly surrounded by the hum of Spanish, because my parents relocated to New Jersey, so that my dad could be close to family living in the area and because of his acceptance into a PhD program at Rutgers. We moved into the bottom floor of a two-family house in Bayonne. My father’s aunts lived on the top floor, two middle-aged Irish-American women, who would find any excuse to come downstairs in order to play with the baby (me!) So, English became spoken more often than not, in order to accommodate my ever-present great aunts. Spanish was then reserved for bed-time lullabies, some of which I can still hum to myself. When my siblings were born, an unexpected set of fraternal twins, my dad’s mother came to live with us for a short period of time, seeing as how mi abuela in Mexico couldn’t just up and leave. So my grandma sung lullabies for me while my mother stayed up with the twins, so even bed-time got switched over to English. Soon, Spanish became a truly foreign language to me, which I could only re-conciliate through my own academic pursuits.

So, I never saw my lack of understanding Spanish as a privilege. I always thought that if I came from a bilingual household that I would have a much more prestigious education, perhaps even being able to focus on my third language right now instead of Spanish. But I now realize that not knowing Spanish was almost considered a privilege for me, especially considering that my sister was put in an ESL class just because they figured she couldn’t speak English because she was shy and the teacher saw that my mother (a visibly Latina woman) dropped her off at school on the first day of kindergarten. My strength in English is a huge privilege, even though I am often sad about having a very real disconnect from my culture due to many years of not being able to speak my mother’s native language.

Reading Alvarez passage on language brought to me the most strange of realizations: I was thinking to myself “ my mom is not the reason why I am bilingual because Spanish is my first language”. I had to stop myself and re think that — my mom is in fact the reason why I am bilingual, I moved to this country 5 years ago and perhaps I would have learned English in my country, but not too this level and not this fluent. The main reason why I moved to the States was to graduate from college in this country, however, this would have never become my goal if my mom wasn’t already living here.

Gracias mami, hope to one day have the courage to express my gratefulness ..

Our first time to the Statue of Liberty, she cried .. We have gone there four times now.

Sam,

I know you are no longer the person you once were but do you know the damage you have done? She was crying for help and I’m not sure you realize how much you made her suffer. You took her life at sixteen. She had so much going for her, so much she could be.
Two years later your child lay wrapped in her arms. In those moments she was untouchable but as soon as baby Christian went to abuela she was yours.
Yours to fuck, yours to beat, yours to destroy.
Pobrecita.
I remember the day she came to us. It was Jimmy’s birthday and we were all in Connecticut. Christian was with abuela.
I was seven and Katherine was eight. Angelito by Don Omar played in the background. She was eighteen.
I know you are no longer the person you once were but do you realize how desperate someone has to be to seek help from a couple of children?
Pobrecita.
She showed us her scars and pointed out her bruises. Con sus ojos lleno de lagrima, me dijo, This is where Sam hit me. The lashes were scattered across her back. At each curve black, blue, and purple were splattered, deep in color.
¿Y como que íbamos entender? Diablo. ¡Tuve siete años!
Katherine and I just stared as the song played in the background…
Amaneció bajo las alas de la muerta. Aquellos brazos de hombre que la aprietan fuerte.. Y vuela, vuela vuela. Angelito vuela. Que ya no me queda muchas horas de vida…
And that’s when you walked in.
What the fuck are you doing? you said as you unbuckled your belt.
I remembered every time papi would take off his belt.
It meant she was in trouble.
It meant she was getting a pow-pow.
It meant Sam was going to give her a real reason to cry about.
And that’s when you hit her.
I know you are no longer the person you once were but she was crying for help, she was suffering, she was scared. You’re lucky she’s still with you. Appreciate her and teach Christian to never become the person you were. Please.

-Michelle

Today I want to scream for the invisible woman

I write a poem for the best artist of the disguise,

for you that pretend that you don’t exist

I shout to destroy eternally the mask

That covers the emerald that guard your fears

Shout to the society that has stereotyped the woman

In a mannequin of rigid measures reached by few

You are present, you are threatening to those

who are afraid of such power

I challenge you,

To abandon the prejudices

Stop repeating the same phrases that

We have heard until weary,

Free yourself from the diminish

Stop being invisible

“Clean, concise, clear –

Say the right thing.

Right way, no other way.”

Rethink, rewind, redo.

Say it out loud? Think it longer.

One way? Another way.

Some of this, some of that, somewhere between.

Say it now, how it is. Don’t deny

this way, my way.

Sing it with your voice, say it with your hands, sway it with your hips.

Give me the signal.

Do it now, do it naturally.

Don’t make me your example, excuse, lesson.

Don’t praise me, refute them.

Their way, our way.

Can’t say it, write it, express it?

Forget it? Switch. Switch back.

Ingles, Spanish. Switch it up.

Make it work, make them accept, make it real.

Don’t box me into their singularity.

Make it yours, make it both.

Channel, challenge, change.

Give me the signal.

I can do it all.

Lo puedo hacer todo.

This poem was inspired by Celia Alvarez’s testimonio, and also an earlier discussion we had in class about code-switching (primarily in reference to language in the poem, as well as culture).