Speaking Spanglish: On the beginnings of my Cross Cultural Identity Crisis
Looking back, I realize that a part of me always identified as Hispanic, even though I was born in the United States. I was raised by Hispanic parents and though I myself in perspective, ideals and values had always been American, a part of my identity was Hispanic. With the two nationalities constantly warring against each other in ideals and values, the end result was inevitable…
My identity in my family was forged like any other person’s identity, when they come into this world, with my name. Marchis. An abbreviated form of my second name, Marcela. The name that marked the days of my youth. My grandmother from my father’s side, Angela, had given me that name; I was the only child who had the privilege of being named by my father’s mother. I was either called Marcela or a Marcela related nickname: if not Marchis, Marce or Marcelita. I eventually came to detest that name; it didn’t sound very pretty to me and I thought I heard it used mostly in a negative way in my early days : “Marcela ven aca!” (Translation: Marcela come here!) Nevertheless, this is how I came to be known by my relatives and all my relatives’ friends who spoke Spanish. Outside of my Hispanic niche, I was called by my first name Lina.
My childhood was frustrating at times, because of the differences in my cultural background-that of my parents versus my own. My mother taught me Spanish, it’s my first language, despite constant criticism from people that my accent isn’t “Colombian,” a critique that I take as a personal offense. How would you feel if you were told you don’t speak like a person from your country? Now I wasn’t Colombian, I was American, yes, but my first words were not “mom” or “dad”, they were “mama” and “papa”. And being told that my accent was not like that of my parents, was a bit of an insult, I realized later in my adult life. It was like saying I wasn’t Colombian, which I wasn’t, but like my childhood friend Henry pointed out once, I am Colombian, by association, by my affiliation to my parents and ancestors in some way.
Looking back, this was the beginning of the cross cultural identity confusion. When I spoke in Spanish as an adult to others, some would say that I had an American accent.The irony of course was that when I spoke in English in college for example, my schoolmates could tell that I had an accent and knew that I had another ethnic background. Only when I spoke in Spanish, did it really sound like I was from the country where I was born- America.
Learning to read, write and speak in English was a challenge. The words wouldn’t come out right. I had trouble pronouncing certain words. Remember, I learned Spanish first. So my learning of the English language, was very much a struggle, not unlike that of the many Hispanic immigrants who come into the United States and have to learn the language. From an early age, however, I became a lover of books and I indulged in fables, science books, and literary magazines, though I got off to a rough start with the reading. Deep down, a part of me felt like I hated the language, English, though it is the language of my own country. Knowing Spanish, made it very difficult for me to learn English, which caused me frustration in my early years of elementary school.
At home, my mother raised me like I imagine that she was raised- as a well behaved and proper young lady. She taught me to clean (dust, sweep and mop), to be polite (to say hello and good morning, etc.) and on the farther end of the spectrum, she wanted me to learn how to cook. But I refused to learn this last skill mentioned, in my childhood. And to be completely frank, I wasn’t a really big fan of cleaning either, which would later present me with some trouble in my adulthood.
“Tu cuarto no está limpio,” (Translation- Your room isn’t clean) my mother said, standing at the doorway of my room, reminding me once more of my duties to be performed. Like all children, I wanted to avoid responsibility and in some way any preparation for adulthood. .In classic Hispanic machismo for example, the woman has the role of the housekeeper. She cooks and cleans but she doesn’t always work. Her emphasis is on her role in the household. Girls are taught to do things properly to eventually please their husbands in marriage.
Growing up, my mother never spoke to me about college or pursuing higher education. She was very strict about cleaning though, so I assume that she thought I would follow in her footsteps and get married at an early age. But I didn’t. I preferred to focus on other things like my school work, eventually leading to the attainment of my bachelor’s degree in my early 20s. As a kid, I didn’t really focus on cleaning or marriage either. I was a kid. I wanted to live in the moment, enjoy my age. My happiest childhood moments were spent sitting in front of the living room television with my younger brother sitting next to me, not picking up a broom or mop.
“Come on! Come on!” I whispered frustratingly, the Playstation One remote slipping from my sweaty hands. “Seriously!” I huffed as I put down the remote, annoyed that I kept losing. I kept injuring my character, an adorable baby tiger, from the video game Crash Bandicoot Warped, by bumping him or her into people and objects. Moments like these were what my childhood, the good memories, were made of.
Like many American kids, who came from Hispanic parents that were poor during their own childhoods, I was spoiled very much. I had a mansion of toys. A tea and dish set that I had alone, could fill the entire living room floor. My father bought us everything a kid could ever want- bicycles, scooters, roller skates, footballs, chalkboards, learning toys like that telescope I received for Christmas that one year, the list goes on. This is where my happiness lay.
As I grew, I never lost the Spanish my mother taught me or the knowledge of how to clean properly. But I did sense that there was this friction between my mother and I that was rising, that there was a huge wall or mountain coming between us as a result of two evolving parts of my identity: my values and my perspective. As an American teen, I valued my freedom and that can mean different things to different people. As I progressed into high school, to me, it meant the ability to pursue my education, something that isn’t always a guarantee in my parent’s country.
It meant, exploring my personality and coming to terms with something that I felt like I have always known: that I have my own identity independent of my identity as an Estrada. I had always been an introvert, but I had very strong opinions and I was quite outspoken for example. Something that I think is particularly looked down upon in Hispanic culture. I would sometimes challenge my father, the head of the household, something my mother would discourage me from doing. But being stubborn, I would insist, ultimately provoking arguments. I was very liberal and was not a fan of traditions or conventions. I wasn’t a fan of the whole “girls have to wait to be asked out” tradition that my mother’s generation and culture propagated, much to my mother’s chagrin. I didn’t see a problem with asking a dude out to a dance for example. But my mother wouldn’t have it.
“Honey times have changed, it’s not like it used to be,” my father explained to her. “I would never do that,” she said in Spanish, walking away from the conversation frustratingly. He understood only because he had emigrated to this country in his teen years, so it didn’t come to him as much of a shock.
Up until this point, I identified myself as an American in my own household despite my mother’s efforts to raise me and convince me that I had to act like a Hispanic girl. But that idea was challenged heavily while I was an undergraduate student at Drew, a private university located in northern New Jersey.
My sophomore year of college was riddled with turmoil. I began questioning my identity and thinking about race in ways that I never had before. That spring, I dormed with a new student and her friends. As I got to know her, I began to sense a certain degree of discomfort upon realizing that she entertained racist notions. “This is America, speak English,” she said once plainly and vehemently. I had never felt so discriminated against in my entire life. But this wasn’t a one time incident. And she wasn’t the only one who had this mentality.
In the spring of 2011, I took my first Italian class at Drew. My professor once posed the question: “What do you think about immigrants in this country? Should they be in this country, yes or no?” my Italian professor asked standing in the middle of the classroom. My Italian professor was a white male of about average height, with brown eyes and short brown hair. He dressed very professionally but not constantly in blazers that I remember. In his spare time, he taught at a women’s prison. He was a very nice man and I don’t believe he was posing the question out of malice, rather out of curiosity.
I was the only student who defended immigrants. But my professor backed me up. “Yes I think immigrants help the economy with their work,” my professor stated. I think he also went on to say that we were all immigrants in some way and if I’m being honest he’s absolutely right.
It’s funny because my classmates with European backgrounds probably thought that only Hispanics were immigrants; but the truth was that everyone in that classroom was an immigrant either by travelling to American themselves through their parents or grandparents in my own and my classmate’s cases. We were all immigrants whether we like to admit it or not.
In the spring of 2012, I had my own personal catharsis in a theatre workshop caused by the buildup of racial anxiety that I experienced while at Drew and years of struggling with two cultural identities. My theatre workshop was essentially a class where we learned about the tools and the proper techniques used in set building. My class was taught in the Black Box theatre, and it was quite literally, a giant dark room without any elevated platforms like the ones you might find in say an auditorium. The seating reminded me of high school bleachers. The class had all in all about fifty students (I’m estimating here) and perhaps because of the class size was taught here.
From what I remember, I didn’t really talk in that class. The class was huge and I being an introvert preferred smaller class sizes. But this wasn’t the reason I didn’t particularly socialize in the class. Something else stood out to me, that I hadn’t noticed in my other classes because it was nonexistent.
I figured it out. No one was from what I could tell Hispanic; about ninety six percent of the class was white. There was one black guy in the class and one black girl and I think another student that looked like they came from a Hispanic background (the black girl could have been Hispanic but I wasn’t sure I don’t remember asking her) but I couldn’t be sure. But for the most part, none of them looked like they spoke Spanish. Maybe they did but it wasn’t their first language like it was mine. Who knows? What stood out to me though was how I felt in that class: I felt like an outcast, in a way, like a fish out of water. I felt outnumbered. It’s like a switch went off in my head or rather a lightbulb. And I had to come to terms with reality: I wasn’t like them. I was born here yet I couldn’t identify with my classmates.
Let’s face it. I didn’t grow up in the suburbs of New Jersey with a house surrounded by a white picket fence. Both my parents didn’t even speak English, only one of them did. The food my mother cooked was Colombian. My friends growing up were American citizens like I was but they also from time to time spoke Spanish or another language like Arabic. My friends in college upon looking around were mainly American citizens with parents from different ethnic backgrounds but they were nonetheless minorities. I had gone from being comfortable in an environment where I had friends from all Latin American countries to attending a mainly all white school where my closest friends were still minorities. I never gave so much thought to race in my entire life. And because I had never witnessed racism, I was shocked by the way it started to change my thinking…
Looking back on the incident, some questions come to mind. Was I the one being racist? Did it or should it matter that my classmates were all white in my theatre class? Why didn’t I talk to them like I would with anyone else, say someone who was Hispanic for example? Upon further recollection, I do remember talking to one male student, Nathan. He was a nice guy and we worked on some assignments in class together. And eventually for other tasks, like being on run crew, I had to talk to the other students. Maybe I was just experiencing a bit of culture shock. Nonetheless, the feeling was there. The feeling of being isolated and not being able to relate to anyone was there. It stayed with me all this time, even years after I graduated…
I am 27 years old now as I write this and there’s something in all of this, that I’ve come to realize. Yes, I went through a cross cultural identity crisis but this was mainly as a result of how others perceived me. Cultural identity is both a social and individual construct. And I can’t let others’ opinions of race define me. I am a Spanish speaking American. I acknowledge and love some parts of my ethnic roots, like the Spanish language and Spanish food, but I still retain that I am more American in my thoughts and beliefs. I celebrate other cultures. It doesn’t matter to me if you’re Peruvian, Russian, German, Egyptian or Cambodian. I’ve had the pleasure of having friends in the workforce from different countries from all around the world. I see people by their character, not their racial background.
While I still have this crisis after college and from time to time still encounter racist comments, it’s boiled down less since I entered the workforce. I have the privilege of working in a public school where ethnicity doesn’t necessarily matter. I talk to anyone independent of ethnicity. I have the pleasure of working with very kind people. And that is what has helped me see past my cultural crisis and has made me conclude that perhaps race shouldn’t really matter as much as it does in America. Because I am a person, beyond my nationality.
