identity

  Dear Mija, When your daddy and I got married we wrote our own vows. Vows are kind of like promises that are deeply personal, but you say in front of family and friends at a wedding. On that day in my white dress and lace veil, holding your dad’s hand, I told him: I promise to respect your heritage and your culture and one day teach our children about the beauty found in our differences. We made lots ofRead More ...

One day when I was teaching ESL, I was working with a group of students from Mexico and Central America. Pencils scratched the paper, the energy was electric, the excitement palpable: we were filling out their applications for a program at a community college that would allow them to take a class over the summer. And the, we got to the demographic section: “Miss, am I white, black, Asian, or American Indian?” asked a young girl from El Salvador. TheRead More ...

An article published earlier this week in The New York Times titled “For Young Latino Readers, an Image Is Missing” has created a flurry of commentary about the dire need for more children’s books with which our Latino kids can identify. In other words, more children’s books with characters that look like them and with storylines that speak to them. While I would love nothing more than to see all Latino authors been given the opportunity to be published, I’m having aRead More ...

I grew up in a community where Spanish and English were spoken simultaneously. My parents were definitely Spanish-dominant in their fluency and identity as Mexican immigrants. Most of their friends spoke Spanish and were from Spanish speaking countries. As a child I had to learn which of our guests primarily spoke Spanish, which often times were also the ones I gave a kiss on the cheek instead of a handshake. I lived in a bilingual and bicultural environment, but withRead More ...

Do you ever wonder how your identity would be altered had you been born and raised in a different part of the country? The American Latino experience is vast indeed, but poignantly so when comparing the experiences of Latinos living on the polar coasts of our great nation. As a Cuban growing up in the beach suburbs of Los Angeles, many years before communities such as ours at SpanglishBaby existed, there was truly only one reality for the Latino experience:Read More ...