Wednesday, September 9, 2015 // The Statement
7B
Personal Statement: My ever-evolving identity
by Kathleen Davis, Senior Arts Editor
A
re you Hispanic/Latino? Select yes or no.
My first words were not in English.
The way my mom tells it, out of a bab-
bling string of “goo-goos” and “ga-gas” came
“gato,” a meaningless word in English, but the
start of a bilingualism that came from growing
up in a duel-cultured household. “Gato,” or “cat”
in Spanish, was the beginning of a complicated
relationship between my two cultures, which I
haven’t taken control of until recently.
I’m the product of a Mexican-American
mother and a Canadian-American (read: very
white) father, speaking exclusively Spanish to
the former and English to the latter during my
formative years. My family friends and my dad’s
relatives often tell stories from when I was a tiny
child, having not yet differentiated what was
English and what was Spanish, responding to
questions asked in one language with the other,
leaving most outside my family confused and in
need of rapid translation.
After entering the public school system, where
English quickly became my dominant language,
I held a certain pride for my diverse half, a rare
commodity in my predominantly white home-
town where I was one of five or six kids in my
graduating class from a Spanish-speaking house-
hold. I was the only kid on the block who had
birthday parties with piñatas, with “happy birth-
day” and las mañanitas sung consecutively before
I blew the candles out on my cake. My friends in
4th grade Spanish hour called me “the human
dictionary” for my rapidly whispered transla-
tions during quizzes. Before self-consciousness,
my uniqueness was a source of pride.
And then struck preteen indifference.
At around 12 years old, when being different
makes you want to blend in even more to the
status quo, I began responding to my mother’s
Spanish questions with English, more likely just
a “yeah” or “no” to contribute as little to con-
versations as possible. This period didn’t last
long, but the funny thing about language is if
you don’t use it, you lose it. I would notice it in
inopportune moments, like speaking with my
grandmother or doing translations for friends.
Blanking on an English-to-Spanish translation,
messing up a simple grammatical structure. The
shame of knowing I was losing the language was
enough to perpetuate a cycle of less use at home
and more forgetting. It’s a period of time I wish
I could go back to just to shake Little Me out of
that irreversible stupidity — “Stop being such a
tonta!”
“I’m just tired,” I’d say. “My Spanish brain
needs to be warmed up.” Partially true, but I
never had that problem earlier in life.
What struck me worse than preteen indiffer-
ence was the constant utterance that would fol-
low after my Latina confession — “But you don’t
look Mexican!” A phrase that seems so harmless,
but when heard frequently can cause an identity
crisis of cosmic proportions for a small little girl.
I get it, I’m one of the palest girls around and my
hair is only light brown instead of raven. But that
simple phrase, which could easily be responded
to with a little education about the diversity
within the Latin@ community, burrowed so
deep into my head that I questioned if I even was
Mexican. Sure, I’m technically half, but was that
enough to care about learning Spanish anymore?
If everyone thinks I’m just a standard white girl,
it’s not like I need to prove anything to anyone.
Again, tonta.
The looming thought that I wasn’t a Salma
Hayek or an Eva Longoria was the catalyst for
my middle school physical insecurities. I longed
to look like these women, filling my days with
streaky self tanner and Google searches for
“How to look more Latina.” Even as a Hispanic
woman, I conceded to the media-perpetuated
stereotypes that plague my cultural community,
because I was so eager to prove to the outside
that I was one of them. And with every innocent
“you don’t look Mexican!” I fell deeper into the
spiral of identity crisis.
On standardized tests, where it was necessary
to note your race and ethnicity, I always became
glossy-eyed, staring at the questions for too long,
wondering just how Mexican I felt today and if
I was a faker for marking down “Hispanic.” I
always ended up putting down “Hispanic” and
“bilingual,” but it always came with a pang of
guilt I could never explain.
Recovering from insecurity is not a one size fits
all process. For some, therapy is the answer; for
others, it’s something we learn to repress. When I
developed issues with depression and anxiety my
freshman year of college, I assumed they were
triggered by the textbook examples: feelings of
isolation, large life transitions, etc. Never did it
cross my mind that these issues could stem from
the deeply rooted thoughts that I was a free float-
er in life, knowing I was too white to fit with the
Latinas and too Latina to feel comfortable being
completely white. These feelings were exempli-
fied by the process of moving away from home
and losing what I felt was the only tie I had to my
diversity — my family, who I used to justify my
Hispanic-ness.
I’m still working through these feelings of
insecurity, but with age and education, they’ve
gotten better. Moving away from home, though
difficult in the sense that I felt like I was los-
ing my Mexican identity, allowed me to come in
touch with a multitude of diverse individuals,
many of whom identify with more than one cul-
tural identity. My identity to my two cultures is
ever-evolving and I’m learning that that’s OK. I
feel confident in proclaiming that I’m a Latina
woman as I work slowly to regain the parts of my
language I’ve lost over the years, and I’m learn-
ing to be proud of my uniqueness once again.
ILLUSTRATION BY CHERYLL VICTUELLES