We see each other for who we truly are as “others” who understand what it means to live in the liminal space between worlds, and who have found a home in this place, too. We don’t try to define each other according to our social conditioning. But with those of mixed heritage, that weight is lifted. Throughout my life, I’ve felt pressure to present myself in different ways depending on who I was with. I am not made to feel “less than” because I grew up in another country.īut it’s the connections I’ve built with other mixed race expats that have had the most profound impact in the way I see myself. The friends and acquaintances I’ve made in Guatemala are patient when I don’t understand a cultural reference, and it doesn’t matter whether I speak broken Spanish or whether traces of English roll off my tongue. When asked about my background, I don’t fear that my response will somehow alienate me, or that I’ll have to prove myself. Now, as an expat residing in Antigua, Guatemala with my husband and small son, I feel a greater sense of belonging. My Latinidad was secondary or something to root out altogether. was made up of hopeful, motivated, and hard-working people, it was only my white side that ever garnered praise-how well I could speak English and adopt American values, the fact that I was light-skinned, or that I appeared grateful to live in a country with more opportunities than the “third-world country” that birthed me. Even though I knew the Latinx community across the U.S. In Georgia, I’d never seen my multiple halves as something to be proud of. A lifetime of invasive questions in the suburbs had prepared me for uncomfortable small talk, yet I stumbled over my words, careful not to reveal myself as the foreigner I believed they saw.
Whenever I was introduced to someone new, I tried to make it clear that I was multiracial to explain my inadequacies: I didn’t listen to the same music, watch the same shows, or understand many cultural references.
Could I claim to be half-white even when my appearance said the opposite?īut identifying as Latinx also felt off. I didn’t feel comfortable saying I was American the way my dad and brother were. The first years I lived in Santa Ana, I was nervous of being seen as an imposter-someone trying to co-opt a “Latinx” or “white” space when neither seemed true to who I was. It wasn’t until I relocated to El Salvador to study journalism in my late teens that I was able to see myself outside the confines of the American gaze. Telling someone with deep southern roots that they are the same as a northerner would elicit anger. Yet telling someone from California that they are undoubtedly a New Yorker would be offensive. In the U.S., politicians will lump all Latinx communities together or spread dangerous stereotypes. Yet I have often felt erased, like my identity was invisible. They are never conflated for their parental colors. Yellow and blue become green red and white, pink.
When two colors are mixed, they become something entirely of their own. After explaining that I had Central American roots, he waved a hand at me “It’s the same thing.” “You look Mexican,” the man in line insisted after asking where I was from. At doctors’ appointments and the DMV, I’d linger over the option other to describe who I was.
Reclaime me free skin#
I didn’t inherit my younger brother’s glossy blue eyes with his dark furled lashes and pale skin - my jet black hair, olive complexion, and full lips were a dead giveaway for my mixed heritage. I began laughing off intrusive questions about my appearance by saying “I’m a mutt.” My two white-passing brothers didn’t need to offer such explanations. Being raised in a homogeneous part of Georgia, I found it hard managing people’s closed-mindedness, and reconciling the parts of myself that didn’t fit neatly into their expectations.
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