"I move through the world as someone who is constantly told I don't look or sound like what people expect a Puerto Rican to be..."
Meet Erica (She/Her) a generation 1.5 Latina who speaks on her experiences with liminality.
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“Technically, Puerto Rico is part of the United States, and that has always made the whole ‘generation’ question hard for me to answer. My father was born on the island and came to New York City when he was seven years old. My mom’s generation is the first to be born off the island. So am I first generation? Second? Neither? In my head, I joke that I’m generation 1.5.
My Spanish is terrible. I understand a good amount, but I’m too embarrassed to speak it because I’m afraid of being made fun of.
That fear has always been there underneath everything. When I was in kindergarten, though, I was part of a show put on by Latino kids that included dancing and singing, and in that moment I felt really proud and accepted, like I clearly belonged.
Because I am white passing and have a non-regional dialect, thanks to my parents, who didn’t want me to have an accent and really discouraged any sign of a Nuyorican accent, I often feel like I’m living between two worlds. Not white enough, not Latina enough. Every time I share that I am Latina with someone, I’m met with: ‘Oh, I had no idea!’ or ‘But you don’t look/speak like a Puerto Rican!’ Depending on the person, it’s meant either as a compliment or a veiled insult.
My dad’s family came to NYC in the 1950s. He was one of ten children, so they came over piecemeal, the older siblings getting jobs and sending money back to Puerto Rico for the others to come. My mom’s parents also came in the ’50s but met in New York City, at a boarding house on the Lower East Side.
They both had children from previous relationships and had left those children on the island to start a new life in NYC for their families. Within a few years they were married, brought their children over, and then had another four children together.
My grandparents worked in all kinds of factories. One factory made dolls, and my grandmother would bring the leftover parts home and make dolls for my aunts. My grandmother’s sister was also in NYC and worked in a candy factory; she would bring broken candy home. My mom’s family was very poor, but when they talk about that time, they do it with smiles and laughter, as if those broken pieces and scraps were treasures.
Sometimes I feel as if I am not entitled to the culture, because I wasn’t born in Puerto Rico and I haven’t been there in many, many years. I feel closest to it during Christmas, when I incorporate some of our favorite traditions, foods, and music. That’s when the island feels less far away, when the pieces of my identity seem to line up for a little while.
I don’t know what other lives I could have lived if I hadn’t been born here, so I don’t really wish I lived anywhere else. Being of Puerto Rican descent is a different experience because my family migrated to another part of the same country. They were considered citizens already. I feel like those big legal words like immigrant, migrant, and alien might apply in feeling, but not in actuality.
So I move through the world as someone who is constantly told I don’t look or sound like what people expect a Puerto Rican to be, carrying stories of factories and boarding houses and broken candy, holding my culture closest during Christmas, and quietly occupying that 1.5 space between island and mainland, between what people see and who I know I am.”
Favorite Quote
It is what it is — Unknown
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