Growing up wasn’t always easy for me. Whether it would be my dad’s side of the family telling me I’m not Puerto Rican enough or the kids at school telling me they’re parents think I’m “ghetto” and that they can’t hang out with me. Experiencing these things has made me question myself and have a huge identity crisis all while in middle elementary school through middle school. I would question if I was good enough. If I was Puerto Rican, enough. Or if I was just some ghetto Puerto Rican girl. Feeling all those things at once I didn’t know how to find myself so I would hang out with people in my culture. Doing this still wasn’t good enough because besides those things i was facing i also had to face my grandmother who is consumed with self-hatred for her where she comes from. My mom is half Puerto Rican and half Italian, but she doesn’t speak Spanish. Although her mom speaks Spanish fluently, she would always say that “they’re (my mom & her sisters) white they don’t need to know Spanish”. Hearing this shocked me and ultimately made me look at her differently. If she wasn’t so consumed with self-hatred, would she have taught us (her kids & grandkids) Spanish? Where did this self-hatred come from?
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