Growing Up Latina

If I had to rename my blog it would be Growing Up Latina. Scrolling through my YouTube feed one day, a video popped up of singer Jessie Reyez on a podcast called Growing Up Latina. It was only the second episode and I’m so glad I checked it out. It was a great match because I watch a lot of podcasts and I love all things Latina; I guess the algorithm is good for something. Hosted by Alyi V of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent, this new podcast provides space for Latinas to share their stories, struggles, and successes. Alyi V is a compassionate listener and such a champion of all her guests—some who are her real life friends—that she makes you feel like she’s your friend, too, and she just wants to see you win. While we get insight into the guests’ careers and how they got where they are in their respective industries, which is always super interesting to hear, my favorite part of this podcast is listening to the stories of how other Latinas grew up in the states, some with two cultures like me. They discuss the food, music, and parenting style of their Latino background, but language seems to be a big topic—can you speak Spanish or nah?

I grew up speaking both Spanish and English, but English is my native tongue, so I definitely consider it my dominant language. I speak Spanish strictly at work because of my job as a bilingual caseworker, and when I have to talk to my Spanish speaking relatives. Because I mostly think, speak, and write in English, my Spanish is more conversational; there’s a lot of words I don’t know or forget but the opposite can sometimes be true, too. There’s some words I know in Spanish that I can’t think of in English or that just sound better in Spanish because that’s how I grew up saying it. Like, it’s not avocado; it’s aguacate. We’re not sitting in the living room; we’re in the sala. My favorite saying is the Puerto Rican phrase, Ay, bendito, the standalone bendito, or the even shorter variation, ‘dito. It’s the perfect thing to say whenever you want to express anger or sadness. It’s so Puerto Rican I had to make it the title of my first novel, Bendito.

I text my mom a lot for help with translation and she’ll hit me up too to help proofread her English. She was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico and grew up mostly in Santa Isabel. She left PR at 17 after her adoptive mother passed away from cancer and moved to Passaic, New Jersey with her older brother and sister—my Titi Madeline and Tio Felo. She then went to college in New York and lived in Ridgewood with her Panamanian friend, Daly. She met my dad at 22 (he was 21) at Western Beef, a grocery store they both worked in. He had immigrated to New York from Quito, Ecuador at 19. She and her co-workers thought he was really cute and mistook his serious demeanor for him being gay because they never saw him with a girlfriend. They all struck a bet to see who could win a date with him. My mom won the bet with, to quote her, her beauty and body. They dated for six months before getting married and they’re still together thirty-four years later. They bonded over music, dancing to salsa, merengue, and bachata at their local club in Ridgewood every weekend. They both speak English but my mom has more of an accent, which is funny since she finished high school in New Jersey and my dad had to learn English from scratch when he came here. He’ll joke that her Puerto Rican Spanish isn’t Castellano and she’ll roll her eyes and flick her wrist, unbothered. They speak to my sisters and I in both languages but when they break out the Spanish we respond in English.

Me with my parents when we started out as a family of 3.

The best part of my experience growing up Latina is having two Latino cultures in my household. I grew up more connected to my Puerto Rican side because my mother’s family was around us more. My Titi Madeline and her kids came down to visit us from PR almost every other summer and were always present for special events like my parents’ church wedding and my sister’s Quinceañera; my Tio Felo was always around because he lived in our area in Reading, Pennsylvania. I grew up greeting my aunt and uncle with la bendición. I have so many memories with my Puerto Rican relatives. I remember once while I was singing along to a salsa song in the back of my mom’s silver Hyundai, one of my female cousins ruthlessly wondered out loud how it could be that I sang better in Spanish than I could speak it. That immediately shut me up. I also had more Puerto Rican friends because there weren’t any Ecuadorians in Reading that I knew. I grew up in the Catholic Church where we attended Spanish-speaking mass every Sunday morning at 10:30 religiously and without fail. Even if I’d already attended mass with my Catholic school, my dad insisted it wasn’t the same. It always felt the same though. You would often find different groups from the church selling pastelillos and alcapurrias outside between services, but I, always the picky eater, would refrain from eating any. Between school and church I was always entrenched in Latino culture surrounded by mostly Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Mexicans. It wasn’t until much later that we met two or three Ecuadorian families. While my dad did take us to Ecuador when I was in the 1st grade, I didn’t go again until I was fifteen. And before that it wasn’t until I was in the 8th grade that I met some cousins my dad has in New York. It was when my dad took me to Ecuador my sophomore year of high school that I was blown away by the differences in my two cultures.

I remember my first morning in Ecuador I was crouched down in front of the vanity mirror doing my hair. Through the mirror I saw my tias making my bed and I froze. Never had my titi made my bed for me or my own mother since I was a kid. Nor would I ever expect them to being a fully capable teenager. My height was another factor. While I considered my almost 5’6 frame gigantic next to my petite Latina friends, it was quite monstrous near my Ecuadorian relatives. My one female cousin joked that we must drink leche de oso in the U.S. I was also surprised that the women of the house—my great aunt and my cousin—would get up early in the morning every day to prepare not only breakfast but whatever else they were going to make for lunch. My cousin would sit on a crate on the floor peeling potatoes to make French fries and gasped when I told her our fries came in frozen bags. It wasn’t only their charity and organic cooking that took me by surprise but the different words they had for things or sayings that I had never heard. I couldn’t say buenas noches; it was hasta mañana. Saying gracias after a meal was also wrong; it was Dios le pague. Siblings were referred to as ñaños and ñañas depending on their gender but my favorite one was guagua. For Puerto Ricans, guagua means bus, but for Ecuadorians the word refers to a small child. It was a culture shock for sure but so cool to see how different countries can be within the Latino community.

Me and my dad in NY.

I look back fondly on the times I hung out with my Spanish girlfriends watching the music videos of Sean Paul, Aventura, Daddy Yankee, Wisin y Yandel to Saturday mornings listening to Jerry Rivera, La India, El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico while my sisters and I helped mami clean the house, a prerequisite before we were allowed to do anything fun. There was nothing like bonding with my friends over what products to use for our curls or knowing all the words to “Atrévete-Te-Te.” My parents’ love of salsa and merengue, my mom’s faithful digestion of novelas, and my dad’s obsession with movies and books exposed me to so much Latin and American culture. I think one of the coolest things for me growing up Latina was knowing the music of the Fugees and Celia Cruz; enjoying the rap bars of Jay-Z and Tego Calderon. I’m so proud of being a first-generation Latina and it’s why I felt it was such a cool opportunity to create a Latina protagonist in Bendito who wanted to create a magazine celebrating that fusion of rich cultures. Because Santería is a major part of my fictional story, I had already decided to make my heroine Maritza Cruz a Puerto Rican; I wanted to create ties between her ethnic background and the Caribbean religion. When I was presented with a Thanksgiving scene, that was the moment I decided to make her Ecuadorian, too. I wanted to show Ecuadorian cuisine because I’d never seen that in literature before. I write Latino characters in my stories because I don’t see that often in literature either.

Alyi V of the Growing Up Latina podcast ends her episodes asking her guests rapid fire questions about being Latina. My favorite one is: Tell me you’re Latina without telling me you’re Latina. My answer would be: Bendito.