Ashley Steele

Hispanic/Latinx Identity

Hey guys!

I chose to write about identity, specifically Hispanic/Latinx identity. I discussed how identity is a complex process that can confuse and pressure a lot of people, and liberate others. I talked about my own struggles with my Hispanic identity and the identities of other Hispanic/Latinx friends of mine/classmates here at UD.

I connected my ideas with the thoughts of Anzaldúa and realized that what she had to say about identity is still super pertinent to what’s going on today, and is extremely eye-opening too. I had a lot of fun interviewing people for this essay and actually learned a lot about Hispanic/Latinx culture and stereotypes while going online for articles and from talking with my friends.

Hope you guys enjoy, and learn a little something in the process!

URL: https://medium.com/@adsteele/complexities-fluidity-and-growth-hispanic-and-latinx-identities-78b5a7157327

Some of Ashley’s Favorite Quotations

“And you look at the things they can do with a piece of ordinary cloth, and the things they fashion out of cheap, vulgarly colored (to you) twine, the way they squat down over a hole they have made in the ground, the hole itself is something to marvel at, and since you are being an ugly person this ugly but joyful thought will swell inside you: their ancestors were not clever in the way yours were and not ruthless in the way yours were, for then would it not be you who would be in harmony with nature and backwards in that charming way? An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze at this and taste that, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have paused cannot stand you…”

Jamaica Kincaid, “A Small Place”

“As we step further and further into our adulthood and closer to the practices that elicit opportunity we are understanding that unfortunately the structures that rule the ‘real world’ remain unchanged, they just transpire on a more discrete level. Older generations might mark us as oversensitive yet we see it as a fight that we did not choose to take part in. Within the generation that is currently blossoming are various new identities and ideals that are unconcerned about the feuds and tensions of the past, it is frustrating to have to continue cleaning up when we do not feel associated with these evils. We are much more concerned with innovation and creation especially while we have all kinds of readily available technology and networks that were unavailable before.”

Anthony Ozuna-Peña, “The Big Uneasy” Response – October 2, 2019

What Is A “Puertolack”?

LINK: http://roadkillgoldfish.com/my-experience-as-a-white-hispanic-prejudice-and-misunderstanding-come-from-all-sides/

The piece I wanted to bring to the table for my final essay is an article by Kimberly Helminski Keller titled “My Life As A White Hispanic: Prejudice Comes from All Sides.” This article was posted in August of 2013 on the website Roadkill Goldfish, which is a website where writers publish current events and informational articles that is managed by Keller herself.

Keller is of Polish and Puerto Rican descent, and identifies as a Latina. Her father’s side of the family had been in Buffalo, New York, for generations. Her mother’s side of the family came to America to escape Puerto Rican poverty. The two of them met in New Jersey and fell in love.

This piece delves into the struggles she goes through in her upbringing of feeling caught between two worlds: being Polish and European, and being Puerto Rican and Latina. She talks about what it’s like trying to maintain strong roots with her seemingly different cultures, growing up and being too light for her Hispanic family members and too dark or Hispanic for her Polish family members. She also talks about the beauty of the two cultures and how she loves that she can be a part of both of them and see them coexist (most times).

One of the segments of her article that I found the most intriguing was when she discussed the time when she was talking to a group of girls in college about having parents of different ethnicities and races, and she mentioned that she was white and Latina. The girls of the group shut her down immediately and told her that because she had a white name and was white passing, that she didn’t belong in the conversation because she obviously wasn’t Puerto Rican enough for them and their standards (which they indicated in the article: you must have dark skin, curly hair, speak Spanish, go to a barrio school, move your hips, be discriminated against).

I fell in love with this article right away because I also identify as Polish and Hispanic (my grandfather came here from Poland and my grandmother came here from Spain). To hear Keller talk about being white and Hispanic and the internal conflicts that come with feeling “too white” or “not Hispanic enough” or that you’re constantly trying to prove yourself to people was reassuring. I’ve barely read articles or met people who were white passing (or just white) who also identified as Hispanic or Latinx, so this was new and exciting for me to find in my search for materials for this essay.

I want to focus my piece around Hispanic and Latinx identities, their complexities, the struggles that come from trying to identify (or refrain from identifying) in such a broad and diverse community, and how peoples’ Hispanic or Latinx identities have shaped their upbringing and the way they look at themselves and the world. I think this piece and various others that I chose help to highlight the many struggles people of Hispanic or Latinx origins go through and how each and every instance and anecdote is so different from the next, because of how diverse Hispanics and Latinx people are!

I think the other members of this class would find this piece interesting probably for the same reasons I did. It’s a fascinating article about a woman who is multi-cultural and identifies as Polish and Latina, a combination of identities that is rarely shown in the media. I hope that you guys enjoy the piece and get something out of it… and hopefully, understand where Keller is coming from and comprehend why this is still an issue today.

“I’m Rarely Hungry, But I Am Ravenous”

Roxane Gay goes in depth about what it’s like to undergo weight loss surgery, how she felt before the surgery, and what her life was like after the surgery that (kinda didn’t) change her life.

Gay admits that,

“I had a desire to lose weight but an inability – or, perhaps, unwillingness – to force myself towards the deprivation required for the significant weight loss the world told me I needed”

She points out that the main reasoning for her wanting to get weight loss surgery was society shaming her and telling her that she needed to get it done because her body was ugly, unattractive, and not good enough.

I think everyone can agree that the idea of weight loss is all over the media we absorb, even if we aren’t personally concerned with it and aren’t always paying attention to it. Our society is so focused on maintaining certain body types for males and females (and everyone in-between) that I’ve literally seen completely healthy people worry about their weight and try to lose weight that they don’t need to be losing, all to fit into their prom dresses or look like their favorite models or singers. It’s awful and toxic how people are made to feel about their bodies.

I understand that sometimes people who are severely overweight need to do something about it because it could be life threatening and detrimental if they don’t. But what I cannot accept is fat shaming from people who know nothing about the people they are discussing, simply throwing harmful words in their direction because they feel like they have the right to tell them what to do with their body. If someone needs to lose weight, they have the ability and autonomy to go to their healthcare provider and choose to do something about it. They do not need random people coming up to them in school or on the street or on the internet telling them that the way they look is disgusting and that they should “really see someone about that” because “it’s in my genuine interest and for your sake as well”.

You do not have the right to tell anyone what to do with their body. Enough said.

In her interview with Trevor Noah, I found myself nodding my head to a lot of what Gay was saying, such as when she mentioned that people tend to give fat people unsolicited advice, they tell them that since they’re fat they’re going to die early (why do you care anyway?), and she discussed how the world doesn’t tend to accommodate to fat people because they don’t see them as deserving to belong there and that it isn’t their job to make fat people’s lives just a little bit easier.

What is especially heartbreaking about this piece is how Gay isn’t 100% sure of anything she signs up for and agrees to in this process. No matter what she does, she is always doubtful and scared of what could happen or could not happen after she makes a decision. For example, she states that,

“I don’t want any weight loss to be acknowledged (or worse, celebrated), but I also very much do”

indicating that she is constantly insecure, even after the weight loss surgery, about if people will say anything or not say anything about it. Her life has been a constant struggle of overthinking, over-planning, worrying, and stressing about things that she cannot always control. She mentions that she has “replaced one set of anxieties with another”, something that for me was truly heartbreaking. She made this massive financial decision mainly for society’s approval, and she may never truly approve of herself and her body image. She is rarely physically hungry, but she is constantly ravenous for self-acceptance and to feel whole, beautiful, and accepted by others.

Societies all over the world shame fat people for what they are and many of them will refuse to act differently. Like Roxane’s article, this response doesn’t have a very happy ending, because I don’t know myself if there will ever be a solution to fat shaming in our society and other societies over the world. I want to preach about autonomy and self-love, but I feel as though people on the shaming side of this issue constantly refuse to see being fat as anything other than ugly and needing to be fixed.

Your Dreams Do Not Have to Come at the Expense of My Dreams

President Barack Obama, in his speech to the people of America titled “A More Perfect Union”, tackles the issue of racial/ethnic divides in America and how we tend to lose sight of what this country is and what it could become from the constant influx of negative and narrow-minded comments said by people all over the country.

Obama highlights the fact that the American people, even though they “may have different stories,” hold on to “common hopes” and that though “we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, we all want to move in the same direction”. I definitely believe that Americans tend to lose sight of what this country is – a conglomeration of different races, ethnicities, genders, sexualities, religions, classes, etc etc. We are constantly battling it out on social media and out in the streets fighting between massive groups… even though in the end, don’t we all want the same thing? Unity? Love? Cooperation? Trust? Compassion? Hope? A better future?

Probably my favorite quote from Obama’s speech was:

“…we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems… problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian but rather problems that confront us all.”

I was glad that Obama made constant references not only to black and white people in America, but also to Hispanics and Asians and immigrants who are just as much of the foundation of America as anyone else. By incorporating all of these identities into his speech, Obama makes sure that he is addressing and discussing a union in its entirety, not just a fragment of a union such as just white people or just black people.

Obama also notes that in order to better our country and to better this “union”, we all have our own specific instructions that come with who we are. For black people in America, Obama points out that they must “embrace the burdens of [their] past without becoming victims of [their] past”, and for white people, they must understand that what ails the African American community experience do not solely exist in their heads. Racial injustices happened in our past, they’re happening today, and without doing anything about it or denying them all together, they shall presume.

Another point Obama emphasizes that I especially loved was when he said:

“Your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams.”

This beautifully ties the piece together by emphasizing that the various plights of people in America should not be compared for the sole purpose of guilt, victim blaming, hostility, or anything negative of the sort. The people of America, all of them, need to come together in order to form a more perfect union, and realize that they all have the same objective and that nobody will be left behind in obtaining that objective in the end.

Tara Lockhart’s Piece on Anzaldúa

I was instructed to read Tara Lockhart’s piece:

“Writing the Self: Gloria Anzaldúa, Textual Form, and Feminist Epistemology”

along with Anzaldúa’s piece, to make connections between the two, and to analyze Lockhart’s view on Anzaldúa’s story through a more feminist, textural lens. The link to Lockhart’s piece is found below if you want to give it a look:

Link

Being at A Crossroads & Being One Herself

“Who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violent than war?”

-Ray Gwyn Smith

Gloria Anzaldúa’s piece is one filled with raw emotions, harsh criticisms of language and the way we use it, and an exploration of her inner-self and how she has coped with the hardships she has faced being a Chicana woman.

Growing up on the physical borderland of the Texas-US Southwest/Mexican border, Anzaldúa lived in a place she called a “place of contradiction where hatred, anger, and exploitation are part of the landscape but also where she finds a certain joy, especially at the unique positioning consciousness takes at the confluent streams.” (page 356). Anzaldúa grew up in a place where she was reprimanded for speaking Spanish on the playground and was told to control her Spanish tongue in order to seem more professional and to be respected in a society that did not understand her and her people.

Anzaldúa lived her life constantly grappling with the many languages and dialects she was able to speak such as Standard English, Tex-Mex, and Standard Spanish. For her, Tex-Mex was her preferred language – it made her feel welcomed and at home. She was often told by other people that her Chicano Spanish was incorrect, when really, it was a border tongue which developed naturally; it was a living language. (358)

The thing about being a Chicano is that if a person has a low estimation of her native tongue, they automatically have a low estimation of her. (361) From the other readings we have looked at in class, we can understand that this is very specific to people who do not speak English or even “proper” English dialects. Anzaldúa experiences language as a monumental part of who she is.

“I am my language.”

-Anzaldúa (362)

When looking at Tara Lockhart’s analysis of Anzaldúa’s piece in “Writing the Self: Gloria Anzaldúa, Textual Form, and Feminist Epistemology”, she offers insights of how Anzaldúa’s switching between English and Spanish throughout the piece is meant to be a strong, polemical statement. Reading Anzaldúa’s piece, I noticed how powerful it was because of the fact that it integrated both English and Spanish so effortlessly, showcasing Anzaldúa’s familiarity with both languages, and somehow making the reader uncomfortable in a way that Anzaldúa definitely meant to do. Her incorporating Spanish was to make English-only-speaking readers confront their own limitations and turn them into the “other” – something that they may feel as though they cannot identify with if they consider themselves a part of the dominant culture.

An important, interesting aspect of Anzaldúa’s piece that Lockhart brings to light is the fact that Anzaldúa’s essay is formatted in a way that she utilizes many page breaks and uses the white space to her advantage.

“Patches of speech and ideas are simultaneously held apart for contemplation.”

-Tara Lockhart

Anzaldúa uses these page breaks to make the reader pause and think about what she has just discussed, especially when she incorporates Spanish into the piece – she wants the reader to feel uncomfortable, to feel confusion, to feel the raw emotion Anzaldúa is emitting at being at a crossroads and ultimately, being a crossroad of multiple identities and languages herself.

I’ll end my response with a quote from Lockhart that caught my eye and for me, really captured Anzaldúa’s message:

“Chicanos are held together by their differences and this realization and recognition of difference is crucial to hybrid identity.”

-Tara Lockhart

Friendly Reality Check: We’re All Human

Something that I picked up fairly recently in my life is writing in a notebook, something that contains my late night venting sessions, my college to do lists, and my anxious thoughts that play on a constant loop in my head. Everyone who has a notebook or journal understands that they are in no way, shape, or form, perfect. My notebook has scribbles where I’ve misspelled words, I’ve got arrows all over the pages where I’ve tried to connect my thoughts, I have random lists in between heartfelt journal entries, and sometimes I’m writing so fast that my handwriting changes completely. It’s messy and sometimes unorganized but I find beauty in the way that I let my thoughts take over the pages. If anything, I think it shows how human I truly am.

Reading Lambeth’s piece was really eye opening in the sense that it made me realize certain things about society as a whole and even myself. When Lambeth states that, “all creatures that persist are whole”, it actually kind of took me by surprise and made me smile. It’s easy for people to feel broken and messy and incomplete for the flaws that they have or the way that they are. Realizing and coming to terms with the fact that we are human and imperfect is surprisingly really reassuring and calming. If you keep going and don’t look back, you’re on the right track. We’re all whole – no matter the disability, mental illness, trauma, or backstories that might have shaped us into who we are today. Society likes to make us feel as though we need to be searching for more and as though we should feel broken for what has happened to us, but Lambeth reassures us that not a single one of us is “incomplete”.