Growing up it never occurred to me that there was anything different about my household. I had a mother, a father, an older brother, and a dog. We ate together, played games together, and went to the park together like everyone else. We may have looked a little different and talked a little different but appearances didn’t count so much to me when I was in elementary school. Adults often asked me “what” I was and human or American was never the right answer. By the time I moved on to middle school I had the right response memorized (“Well my dad came here from Guatemala and my mom is Russian but she was born here and so was I”). It hit all the bases, answering the question of my ethnicity, nationality, and family history all in one sentence.
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If I achieved anything it was because I was diverse. On the other hand, I was too white to be a real Latina. My Spanish was not as smooth as the other Latino kids. I looked white, acted white, and did “white people things.” So if I was too Latina to be white but too white to be Latina, what was I?
In a society where so much of a person's identity relies on the group they belong to, whether it’s a racial group, religious group, or a nationality, there is little room for someone who is born with their feet in more than one circle. The older I got the more pressure there was for me to choose, yet it always felt like other people had already chosen for me. They looked at me and decided whether I was Latina or white, Jewish or Christian, one or the other. I was almost always the other, though, and I felt stranded.
None of it really matters, of course. It took me years of frustration, of struggling to fit in, and of dejection to realize that it would never work. I will always be a little bit of everything and that is okay. I do not owe anyone a choice between one or the other. I come from a lot of places, but who I am is an American, a student, an avid reader, a vegetarian, and whatever else it pleases me to call myself that day. Who I am is completely up to me, and if I want to have my cake and eat it too then I
If I achieved anything it was because I was diverse. On the other hand, I was too white to be a real Latina. My Spanish was not as smooth as the other Latino kids. I looked white, acted white, and did “white people things.” So if I was too Latina to be white but too white to be Latina, what was I?
In a society where so much of a person's identity relies on the group they belong to, whether it’s a racial group, religious group, or a nationality, there is little room for someone who is born with their feet in more than one circle. The older I got the more pressure there was for me to choose, yet it always felt like other people had already chosen for me. They looked at me and decided whether I was Latina or white, Jewish or Christian, one or the other. I was almost always the other, though, and I felt stranded.
None of it really matters, of course. It took me years of frustration, of struggling to fit in, and of dejection to realize that it would never work. I will always be a little bit of everything and that is okay. I do not owe anyone a choice between one or the other. I come from a lot of places, but who I am is an American, a student, an avid reader, a vegetarian, and whatever else it pleases me to call myself that day. Who I am is completely up to me, and if I want to have my cake and eat it too then I