Throughout the years people have asked me “so, what are you?” and no matter how young or old was at the time, the answer has always been the same. I am Puerto Rican, and that is that. Most of the time my answer is good enough and no further explanation is needed. From time to time though, when the topic of identity comes up there’s a person who will say “no you’re not, you’re an American!” and they’ll glare at me like I’m a communist. I smile a little on the inside. I’m sorry, I didn’t think you were asking what my nationality was, I thought you were asking who I am. Here, let me ‘splain it you.
You and I grew up completely differently, and even my childhood was light-years from my parents. Yes, we may have gone to the same kind of school, gotten a job at the local fast food restaurant, baby sat, washed dishes, you know the drill. We drove a crappy car and were glad jus to have the wheels. We took SAT’s, went to the prom, and all that jazz. But there’s where many of the similarities end. My childhood was shaped by the embrace of cultural identity, and it wasn’t entirely all that “American”.
I grew up, from time to time on any given week, surrounded by the pungent and mouth watering smells of Caribbean cooking. The smell of annatto and garlic sautéing in extra virgin olive oil, the sure smell of something delicious for dinner. I grew up eating arroz con habichuelas, my favorite being the kind with white beans por que no me gusta gondulez. I grew up picking the salty codfish out of ensalada bacalao because that’s the best part, and wishing my mother would stop putting Spanish olives in our garden salads. I grew up with a father who could cook as well as my mother, but who had no childhood reference for American food and therefore, to me, tuna fish sandwiches with celery, onion flakes, and American cheese were completely normal. We won’t talk about my dad and the octopus salad.
I grew up listening to phone conversations in a language I barely understand to this day, company babbling around me, my head whipping back and forth like I was watching a tennis match, badgering people to speak in English. I grew up trying to make myself understood to people I saw barely once year individually, the phrases “como se dice” and “lo siento, pero no hablo espanol” tumbling from my lips in bashful plentitude. I’d drive my mother to distraction, harrying her with interruptions so that she could translate for me. It frustrated me that they never taught me, and it wasn’t until I was older that I was told it was because they felt it would be safer for me to have no accent. No one else I knew had more family that didn’t speak English than those that did. No one else I knew had a grandmother who smelled of Maja, and had an enormous glow in the dark rosary for her headboard.
I grew up dancing to music that you couldn’t help but move to, self-conscious about my size, and knowing I would never match the effortless grace my parents displayed. One of my biggest joys in life is watching my parents dance, better than any Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, beautiful in their lifetime of partnership. Our music is about passion and life, and it flows through you with an irresistible rhythm. My music is primal, and my people know how to dance. From the smallest toddler to the eldest abuelita, white haired, with leathery brown skin and aching bones, we dance. Imagine my confusion growing up, going to non-Latino events and watching people wait until they were “socially lubricated” enough to get up and move. Or worse, there would be no dancing at all. Isn’t dancing about life and love, and aren’t those good things?
But I think the day I grew up in truth was the day I was pressed against a wall by a boy from school and asked “what’s the matter, I thought Puerto Rican girls were easy, you’re boneless after all, right?” Sheer bravado and the fact I was my father’s partner for unarmed self-defense meant I walked away angry, but no worse for wear. I can’t say the same for him. I will say, if it matters to anyone, that he was white, and so was the next guy who tried the same thing. What they found out the hard way was that I grew up in a culture that feels the right way to discipline a man is a frying pan upside the head. What can I say, we’re a passionate people.
Despite that, I grew up wishing I were darker, wishing my hair were blacker. “How can you be the only person I know that wants to be darker?” my mother would ask me. Her milky white skin marking her more Spaniard that Taino or African slave. I grew up proud of how dark my father is, envying my brother for looking like him, and hating the fact that I could “pass” for white. Changing my name when I got married was a two year event leading up to the wedding. I pondered, “am I still Puerto Rican if I change my name? I hardly look it, and now my name will be gone…” No one else I knew understood why it was such a big deal, and no amount of explaining made it any clearer. There’s a certain disconnect when you’re talking to people who don’t have the same frame of reference. Growing up, and to this day, it confused me. How can someone go through life with no history, no cultural reference? Don’t they care where they come from? The 4th of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas do not a cultural identity make! I imagined it was like having a blank slate for a history, could you write whatever you wanted on it?
I might not have the language, I might not be dark enough, or dance well enough, or cook as well as my parents do, but I am Puerto Rican. In every way that counts, in my heart, in the way that the ocean speaks to my soul as I watch the sun set. In the way that the lush green of the forests and mountains soothes me, and the way that the warm rain, whether here or there, makes me turn up my face and smile. I grew up with these things inside of me, all of them, for better or for worse. I am American, and most of the time I’m damned proud of that, but I’m also something else very different. I grew up, isolated but fierce, a Latin girl in the great white north of Upstate New York, and I wouldn’t change it for anything. And if you grew up the way I grew up, you wouldn’t either.
