No Soy De Aquí, Ni Soy De Allá
When people ask me where I am from, I like to say “No soy de aquí, ni soy de allá”. I am not from here, I am not from there. Although it sounds like a joke, for many years I felt like I wasn’t from anywhere. In Mexico I was too white to be Mexican, and in the United States I was too brown to be American. In Mexico I was from the other side of the border, and in the United States I was from the other side of the border. In Mexico I was too gringa porque hablas inglés, and in the United States I was too Mexican ’cause I had an accent. Ever since I was born, I have straddled two worlds– one where my parents were born, and one where we built a life together. I’m not from here, I am not from there; I am from mother Earth.
In 2nd grade, my parents said, “Mijita, it is time for you to learn English. After all, you are a U.S. citizen. “De ahora en adelante, vas a ir a la escuela al otro lado”. From now on, you will go to school on the other side of the border. I was too young to understand what that meant. But it was not long before I realized that going to school in the U.S. would change my life forever, for better and for worse. Third grade of elementary school was very hard for me. My teacher was from Wichita, Kansas, and knew two words in Spanish, bueno and malo. My parents, who spoke no English at the time, taught me three words the morning of my first day of classes. I don’t understand. Three very powerful yet simple words. Every day, my teacher would put me on the spot by asking me questions, preguntas que no entendía. How did I know she was asking me questions? My classmates would say to me, “Te esta haciendo una pregunta”. She’s asking you a question. “Don’t talk to her in Spanish, she needs to learn English. If I see or hear any of you translating again, I will kick you out of my class,” she would say. They were just trying to help. They saw my pain, my silent cry for help. Yet I could never blame her for she was just doing her job.
In 5th grade, all bilingual students were told that we could only speak Spanish during our lunch break. We were also introduced to the English Only jar to help us ”break our habit” of speaking Spanish. For every word said in Spanish, we had to deposit 25 cents. “The more you speak English, the less of an accent you will have,” my teachers would say. For many years, I was taught to believe that the thicker my accent, the more different I would appear to native English speakers. Not only was I ashamed of having an accent but of being bilingual as well. After all, who cared if I spoke two languages, if the only language worth speaking was English? There were days I was upset at my parents for speaking Spanish and not English, for being Mexican and not American, for being brown and not white. There were days I felt ashamed of my raíces, cultura, language, and heritage.
There were also days where I felt ashamed of being the “privileged kid who got to cross the border every morning to go to school in the United States”. I was made fun of for not knowing much about important Mexican holidays such as Día de la Independencia, Día de la Bandera, and Día de la Revolución Mexicana. I also did not know the Mexican national anthem nor did I know how to cook tamales. “Tu no eres Mexicana de verdad,” my friends would say. You are not Mexican enough. I guess they were right. I was not Mexican or American enough; for many years I felt lost, as if I just didn’t belong on either side of the border. It was not until I told my abuela how I felt that I was able to understand. Todos somos polvo, mijita. Del polvo vienes y en polvo te convertirás. No eres Mexicana ni Americana, eres humana. Nadie es como tú, y ese es tu poder. We are all dust. From dust you came, and to dust you shall return. You are not Mexican or American, you are human. No one is you, and that is your power.
Today, I am proud of my accent, of being Mexican American, of being the first in my family to earn a college degree, of being human and kind. My accent reminds me of my lenguaje and cultura, of who I am and where I am headed. It reminds me of my parents’ sacrifices and struggles, their long days and nights at work, and everything they did and continue to do to give us an education and a future worth enjoying. My language is my way of knowing and being; I am my native tongue and my native tongue is who I am. As my hermana Gloria Anzaldúa (2007) said in her book Borderlands/La Frontera, “So if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity–I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself (p. 59)”.
