Being “Latino” enough

Each semester in my Latino Family Studies class, there is at least one student who shares that they don’t feel Latino enough. They share that they feel “whitewashed” and disconnected from their ancestral culture. This always strikes me. I wonder what it means to be “enough” of a culture and also how understandable it is to be influenced by the place in which we live.

And it makes me think too of how painful it sometimes feels for people who don’t have the choice to visit where their parents/grandparents/family are from, given reasons such as documentation and money. And systemic reasons why there might be a feeling of disconnection.

I wonder if in addition to changing broader systems such as our immigration policies (which keep people physically separate from loved ones and ancestral homes), if we can be enough just how we are. And if we can find ways to be connected to different parts of our family and cultures, even from afar. And if we feel separate from our cultures, if we can have a sense of curiosity about where that sense of separation came from (ex: sometimes immigrant parents have told my students-their kids- that they can only speak English in order to assimilate) and seek out our own ways to feel close.

I hope that folks like my students, can ground in a sense of pride about where our families are from while also leaving room for ourselves to be influenced by the present context around us. And if we can relish in being able to decide what to keep from our families and broader cultures, and what to leave behind. 

Validation And Parents

It's been interesting to see as a university lecturer, just how many of my students feel invalidated when sharing about what they're going through with their parents. Most of my students are Latinos and many are first generation and second generation students. They share that when discussing their own stressors, own sources of anxiety, their sadness, and their pain with their parents, they are met with a response that falls along the lines of, "You think this is hard? Why are you even upset? I went through worse." Students voice feeling unseen, feeling guilty about their own emotions, and then question their experience.

At first I felt protective of my students and frustrated with their parents. Again and again I saw how painful this reaction from parents was for my students. I wished they could have gotten instead validation, recognition of what they were feeling, and support.

And, once I took a second to look at the bigger picture I recognized that this was such an understandable reaction on the part of parents. Many of my students’ parents were born outside of the US and experienced traumas in their home countries before experiencing traumatic voyages to come to the US. After arriving here they then experienced immense hardship as well. Many if not most of my students' parents were fighting to meet their basic needs in their home countries and in the US. There was not time, space, energy to process one's emotions. My mentor Kury once said that to "breakdown is a privilege" and many immigrants, including my students' parents, hadn’t and haven't had that chance. When you’re trying to survive, there is a pressure and a necessity to keep moving forward. Experiences and painful emotions are buried. And then parents encourage students to do the same.

So while validating my students, hearing them, and holding that it is painful for them to not feel heard or seen, we can contextualize their parents' reactions. We can see where those reactions come from, which can aid in not internalizing their reactions. This can help with not seeing parents’ reactions as a reflection of ourselves.

We can seek to heal by continuing to speak to our difficult experiences with others in spaces where we sense that those experiences will be heard, just like my students did with each other. We can look to build community with people who can validate how we feel and who can help us feel less alone in our experiences. And we can validate ourselves, even if we aren’t getting that validation externally. (TIP for self validation: naming what you’re feeling and going through in the third person. ex: Yvette is feeling sad that she is leaving El Salvador after having visited her family).

In general with parents, we can both hold that we deserved better and that sometimes it makes sense that our parents haven't been able to give us what we need. We can hold compassion for our parents for their own experiences while also holding compassion for ourselves and our own pain.