Who am I? I regularly take a moment to understand who I am and who I yearn to become. I am first defined by Anglos as an uneducated female. At the same time, to my own ethnicity and culture, I may just be an ordinary female who is destined to grow up to become a respectable and caring housewife. Without questioning these assumptions, there are moments I come to believe I should fall into the expectation.…
I grew up in a Mexican household, so I always had to deal with my family’s special way of doing things. One thing that the women in my family used to do involved curing a baby’s hiccups. When a baby gets hiccups, a member of my family (usually a woman) would get a piece of red string, wet it, roll it in a little ball, and put in in the middle of the baby’s forehead. That would make the hiccups stop. I never knew this was considered “weird” to other people until I was in the second grade…
Amber What is a warrior? What does it mean to be a fighter? Every time I look at my little 4-year-old cousin, Amber, she reminds me of what a warrior is. Amber Marie and her sister Alexia Rose were born 4 months premature and they weighed 1 pound 5 ounces.…
Young Latin American woman of Mexican descent with a curvaceous physique. Full time college student, studying Communications. I would describe myself as a fun, sweet, and easy going girl. I am bilingual in Spanish. Born and raised in the city of Los Angeles in California.…
Although people assume otherwise, I am Latina, and I'm proud to be a part of that community. I obtain my Latin blood from my father, who moved to the United States from Uruguay as a child. My parents divorced each other when I was young; however, when I was with him for either the weekend or the month of July, I embraced all the wonders of my Latin family. Latino culture entails prodigious amounts of cooking, and we always cooked Uruguayan food; it was almost taboo to eat out. From flan to the glorious empanadas, my family always ate homemade meals.…
My whole life has been a sort of bubble, with the same people attending the same community college and staying in the same town. When I came across Sarah Lawrence my sophomore year of high school, something immediately clicked. The college was something unlike any other school I had researched. For a girl from California, New York feels like a safe heaven from an endless cycle of the same rural town. Sarah Lawrence has a great public policy program, and from a young age, I have had strong opinions about Chicano identity and activism.…
Where I was waving “Adios” to my mother, the others were waving “Goodbye” to their parents. Torn between two worlds is what I thought I would always be. As a Mexican-American I believed that I would never be fully Mexican or American. I believed that I would never really fit into one specific group and would be target of exclusion all my life.…
My undocumented immigrant narrative I would like to tell you the story of when my grandma became a US citizen. My grandma went from chihuahua to the United States for the first time when she was 13. Her reason to go was because her mother died at age 37 and my great grandpa was not taking responsibility. She and her friend decided to go to the United States.…
That one GIRL: ME Who am I? It’s the same question everyone has about themselves, but do you ever have an answer for that? Do you know who you actually are?…
Jaslyn Mendez Reilly Honors ELA 10 October 11, 2017 I Am Me Yo soy Jaslyn, and I am Latina. I’m a Mexican girl who was born in the United States of America, which makes me Mexican American. Being Chicana always made me feel like an outcast. When I tried to make friends with full Americans, I could never relate to them because I wasn't exactly like them.…
I am an Immigrant, And I am a Refugee My family choose to move But my family was forced to move Moving was hard for both of us…
Ever since I can remember, my life has always been filled with culture. From multiple quincerias to every dinner having a side of beans and rice. However, I wouldn’t change it for the world because thanks to my distance to the border, it has made a large part of who I am. Growing up, I remember I would always been teased for how close I lived to the border; that I could walk to the border, and if I kicked my ball over my fence, it would land in the Rio Grande River. Besides growing up very close to the border, I believe I had a normal life.…
I do feel like we all are a nation of immigrants, so no I do not find this offensive, Most Americans can trace our lineage to an immigrant, and Most Americans ancestors just arrived to this country within the last century. This what make our country the melting pot that it is. The amount of immigrants that has come to this country looking for freedom is why this is a nation of immigrants. Some of the Caucasians even came from Scotland, Ireland, and England. I feel like everyone in America have a chance to move up whether they do or not.…
“ Levántense ya es hora de que se despierten! ’’ said my grandma one morning as she was cooking us breakfast. My brother and me got up wondering why she wanted us up at 3am. I had forgotten but it was the day we were going to the pueblo .…
Everyone has their own background, the ultimate concept of nature vs nurture. It doesn’t matter if all of us are Mexicans, Americans, or other ethnicities. The childhood memories, family experiences and love are different for everyone and especially in siblings, it shapes every single one uniquely. I have lived my entire life, 17 years, next to the border of El Paso, TX and Juarez, Chihuahua. To the outside world, they might know this border as one of the most dangerous places in the world.…