When I was younger, I never felt out of place. I didn't even know what out of place was, I was always just me. When asked where I was from, I would always say America, obviously. I never regarded my Cuban culture and I resented the fact that I didn't look like the blonde, blue-eyed actresses that dominated the media. As I got older I started appreciating my Hispanic roots more, but I still didn't feel like I truly belonged anywhere. My parents are immigrants. My father came to the United States in 1967, when he was 5 years old. My mother came in 1997, at 18 years old. My father, although Cuban through and through, is not the typical Hispanic immigrant that people expect. He speaks Spanish like a foreigner and has difficulty reading it, let alone writing it. He had a son at 17 and never went to college. His life reads like the character of a teen drama: teenage dad struggling to make ends meet to support his family. My mom, on the other hand, speaks English with a heavy accent and went back to school in her 30s. The one thing they both have in common is they are both extremely …show more content…
I don't speak Spanish at home and my parents are really lenient with me as far as grades and going out. When I talk to my friends about our situations at home, they make fun of me for being so "white". I don't see myself as any different from them, but to them, even the way I speak is considered "white". To me, I am simply me. I don't really define my cultural identity as anything other than Cuban-American, but that's what I was taught when I was younger. When my friends and even my parents talk about being cubano and how close they feel to their country, I feel left out. Sure, I share the same traditions as them and we eat the same foods, but I don't feel like a cubana. I don't speak Spanish as well as other people that I know. Most of the time, I feel like I am pretending to fit in to a culture that is only a small part of
Growing up in a Hispanic family can be quite hectic. It may sound overwhelming, but it is difficult to keep up with American and Mexican
Culture is the shared characters of religion, language, symbols, values, norms, and routines of a specific group. With such a large concept like a culture, there’s bound to be more profound subgenres of cultures to better classify them. Subcultures are more compacted cultural groups within a vast culture. Subcultures can be formed from a person’s racial ethnicity or customs, and examples of subcultures can be Miami’s Cuban-American community to Greek Life on campus. Two of these many subcultures are high culture and low culture.
In my situation, I am fluent in Spanish and have taken great pride in my parent’s history, but I could never truly be considered Mexican, for my tongue lacked practice in comparison and my education of the culture fell short. In turn, the level of melatonin my body would release with the combination of the native blood that coursed through my veins retained me from being considered fully American despite being born in the United States. So, if I did not belong to either tribe, then who was I to say that I had a sense of community; moreover, a sense of identity. It wasn’t until my freshmen year of high school that I began to realize that I had been living in a territory where my brethren faced the same
I believe the term, hispanic, itself does not define who I am. I define who I am and who I want to become. However, I do come from a Mexican heritage. Coming from a Mexican heritage has influenced and deeply impacted my life. My heritage has taught me a lot.
Growing up in Cuba, boys and girls were freely allowed to play with one another. Many girls would climb big trees to get fresh savory mangos. They would fall and scrape their knees while playing hide and seek and even play sports which were considered “manly”. Many girls preferred to work outside the house, they would perform jobs such as; repairing a broken fence or painting the house. Boys were never told not to play with the girls, in fact, they would also help out around the house and clean dishes after a meal.
Being Hispanic has taught me a whole world of things. It has taught me that the world is not what you expect it to be. Going to a public school and being th minority is completely different than going to a see my cousins where every thing is different. The way we talk, the food we eat. Its all different.
It took me so long to try and find where I fit and belong. I now know that my identity is something unique and individual and any person growing up, with or without immigrant parents, struggle to find
I identify as a Latina. I have always considered myself as a Latina, but throughout time, I believe that I have assimilated more into a white individual because of the privilege that I hold and because I have lived in the US most of my life. I have received mostly negative messages from those who are not from my ethnicity. My peers and I were told we wouldn’t graduate high school and be laborers for the rest of our lives. With the current politics, I believe that this still holds true where some people still hold stereotypes and give oppressing messages to Latinos.
One way I fit into my Hispanic community is by my family. They are from Guatemala. That means that I am Guatemalan, even though I was not born where my parents were born. Another way I interact with my Hispanic community is being
I’m the first generation of my family to be Mexican -American, but I have been introduced to the Mexican culture since I was born. I appreciate the difficulties my parents have faced to make me the person that I am today even though I wasn’t born in Mexico my parents have taught me the language and the culture which I’m so proud of being part of. For others being Hispanic is actually being born in any Latin American countries which is not true at all. Being Hispanic is much more than my cultural background it actually describes how much I appreciate my culture and how I get to experience things other people don’t. I fit into the Hispanic community through the experiencing the culture first hand ,participating in traditions and planning to include my culture in my future.
Believe it or not we all fit in our own categories, but we come together as one in the end. No one should ever feel like they are isolated. Feeling like you belong improves your motivation, health, and mind to discover new people and things. Improving your motivation can be caused from feeling like you belong. If you are in trouble and you feel like you can fit in then ,“You are far more likely to reciprocate to help others who are in the similar position in the future”
Coming to Miami I can still remember that gloomy sky on October 21st 2001. It seemed like a normal day to me, yet that day would change my life forever. I remember my mother rushing around the house trying to gather my brother’s clothes while I just sat on the floor observing so much commotion around me. For an 8 year old, I was a very hipper child. I ran around the house, climbed trees, sat on the roof top which was 3 floors high.
Last summer I went on vacation to Puerto Rico with my cousins. We did really fun things like snorkeling, a boat ride, and eating at many wonderful places. Although all those sound really fun, I want to talk about the time I met the most cutest, most fluffiest, most friendliest, animal ever. It all started off on a breezy summer night while my cousins and family were chillin’ at our hotel pool.
As a member of a mainly Cuban family, some of the traditions that my family shared in Cuba where brought to the United States with them. Though I myself was not born in Cuba, there are many traditions that my family has passed on to me, for example the most common would be a quiencienera. This tradition honors the transition of a young lady to a grown women. Another example would be the fact that in Cuba the majority of the population is catholic, thus my family decided to remain practicing the religion even though they reached a country, more so a state with so much cultural diversity, and a variety of different opinion, yet still they remained believing in there old costumes and beliefs. Though things have changed, because of the influence
As the sky faded from an orange glow to black. I would close my eyes and listen to hear the sounds of the night. My mother had asked me if I would like to come inside and watch television with my sister, but I said I wanted to wait outside a little longer to see if owls were close by. I was always considered to be an odd and unusual girl, and sometimes I was even given a second glance (not in a good way). Some odd and unusual facts about me, are that I grew up with two families, I like being shy, and art is a huge part of my life.