WHO AM I???
Culture is a beautiful thing! Belonging to something and having a sense of identity is amazing! but what if you feel like you don’t belong in any specific culture? What if your own culture is foreign to you? What if your own culture treats you like an outsider instead of one of their own? Culture and diversity can be difficult to understand and interesting to learn about. In the book by Moran et al. he says that “Traditions express a particular culture, giving its members a sense of belonging and uniqueness.” (Moran, R., Abramson, N., Moran, S., 2014). But what was my culture, what Tradition?
Puerto Rican? New York Rican? Gringa?
In New York City, the hispanic community does not view me as a hispanic they claim that my Spanish is too well spoken (ha ha) and when I travel to Puerto Rico, the Puerto Ricans do not view me as a Puerto Rican-American. They call me “gringa” or New York Rican, because I do not speak the Puerto Rican “slang” that I really did not learn because I was not raised there. I did live in Puerto Rico for seven years and I learned about the culture and the amazing food! However, I always felt like an outsider because I was always treated like an outsider because I was different from them. The same thing happens when I visit the Puerto Rican neighborhoods in New York City, I feel like an outsider because I am not like them at all. I was not raised in the Puerto Rican neighborhoods. I do not speak the way they do, they call me a “white girl” So who am I? What culture can I identify myself with? So where do one belong when they do not belong anywhere? Moran et al. says that intentions are important and just like culture perceptions count. (Moran 29). There are different perceptions as to how people view you or interpret who we are. Depending where you are physically, what town, what country, the perceptions of you vary.
Moran says that parents influence their children (Moran 2), while I agree that parents do influence their children and they pass down to their kids what they learned from their parents and from their grandparents. The “vertical identities” as expressed in Andrew Solomon’s book, Far from the Tree, which is cited in Moran et al. (Moran 3). I agree with that point of view, however, I strongly believe that our environment plays a more dominant factor in our development as well, the acquired traits which Solomon refers to as “horizontal identity”.
I spent my childhood in New York City and my teenage years in Puerto Rico but never identified with either culture.!! I often asked myself
“WHO AM I?? where do I belong”?
I was born to a Puerto Rican father and my mother was descendent from Galicia, Spain. So what does that make me? They were so very different! It was so confusing! My mom was very light skinned and my dad had an olive complextion. My dad was a devout Catholic and my mother was a demure and conservative protestant. Growing up I didn’t know which religion was the right one! I just went with the flow. Being the oldest of five children I pretty much made up the rules as we went along. We weren’t allowed to speak English at home, so we basically spoke sign language all day long to avoid getting yelled at by our father. Since my brother was born deaf, it worked well because he was always included in all of our conversations. Our parents never learned sign language, they thought it was just too difficult to learn! The girls were taught to grow their hair very, very long long and never cut it. To wear dresses at all times, because pants were for the boys. We were taught that bicycles were for the boys and girls were prohibited from riding on them. Girls were not allowed to speak to other boys that were not your brothers or part of the family. We were expected to behave in a “demure” fashion and not overly friendly toward the boys. The boys were allowed to do pretty much anything and everything.
My father walked us all to school every single day! and we lived right across the street from the school!!! The kids at school used to call me a “mama’s girl”. Ugh!
When I turned 14 years old, I begged my dad not to walk me to school anymore because the kids made fun of me. So he said he would watch me from the window, as I turned the corner and he could no longer see me, there was a gang in front of the school and they put a knife to my throat and mugged me and I only had a dime in my pocket! They were going to stab me when the school security guard intervened and saved my life! After that I didn’t mind that my father walked me to school or that the kids called me “mama’s girl, however, my parents were afraid and decided to move to the a strange Island of they called paradise by the name of Puerto Rico shortly thereafter.
Puerto Rico was beautiful and the air smelled so good, but the people were strange. The people looked strange to me, they starred at us, spoke in a foreign language, and much too fast. I did not understand them. They laughed at my pointy shoes, they laughed at the way I spoke Spanish. Even my cousins called me names, something they always called others was “Jíbara” which were a class of unsophisticated class of Puerto Ricans who were often ridiculed for their peculiar dialect. Others thought that all five kids were all deaf mutes because we used sign language to communicate at all times.
Spanish, English or Spanglish?
We were afraid to speak Spanish so that we wouldn’t be made fun of and at home we were afraid to speak English because our dad would get mad, so we became experts at sign language. So what does this have to do with culture? Everything I guess, we became unique and different in our own way. Not belonging to any specific culture but creating a world of our own. How about a little Spanglish? (Alphaomegatranslations.com)
In search for a better understanding of the Puerto Rican culture I read a book titled “When I was Puerto Rican“ written by Esmeralda Santiago. It was very interesting, she also had the same experience but in the reverse. I could identify with most of it but not all of it. However, I saw some of the same trends, but I did not know what childhood would have been in Puerto Rico because I was grew up in New York as a child and did not know any of the children school songs or customs that everyone in Puerto Rico spoke about. While she yearned for a Puerto Rico that was home to her, I yearned for the New York that was home to me. How frustrating it was!
I couldn’t wait to go back to New York! I did not go back to New York until I had graduated from the University of Puerto Rico (I learned how to read, write and speak Castilian Spanish). By that time, I was already an outsider to my fellow New York Ricans, they claimed my Spanish was too proper. The Puerto Ricans in New York spoke broken Spanish (and broken English), I was and outsider once again.
I moved to a mixed and neutral neighborhood, and I focused on my music, performed Spanish songs at different events and then focused on raising a family. Puerto Rico became a place to spend Summer vacations on our favorite beach, “Crash Boat”. Swinging in the lazy hammocks at the rhythm of the ferocious waves of the ocean.
A new Identity?
So… with all that said a new culture and a forced new identity emerged not by intention, but by necessity. Never emphasizing on any specific customs, my daughters were taught to wear both dresses and pants, to ride a bicycle if they wanted to. They were taught to respect others, to embrace differences, they were taught that people communicate in many different ways. They were even taught sign language! Taught that there is no right or wrong way, but many different people and may different ways. We have learned as we are all different we can all be the same.
I wanted to learn more about my heritage so I had my DNA tested by Ancestry.com and as it turns out, I am 76% European, mostly from Spain (Galicia) , a little Italian, a little Greek and a little Irish and native American Indian. So many different cultures to learn about!
Works Cited:
Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing Cultural Differences. (9th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.
Who am I [Image] retrieved http://www.lovethispic.com/image/53167/who-am-i (Sept 5, 2018)
Keep Tranquilo and Habla Spanglish [Image] retrieved from : alphaomegatranslations.com/foreign-language/localizing-with-Spanglish/ (Sept 5, 2018).
DNA Summary, Retrieved from: http://www.Ancestry.com (Sept 5, 2018)
Santiago, Esmeralda, (2006) “When I was Puerto Rican” New York: Da Capo Press