![]() There was no vocabulary to light up the margins where my outlier selves were camped, waiting for the borders to open and let more of my selves in. (Needless to say, I did not love “I Love Lucy.”) The whole idea that I could be in charge of the nuances and complexities of my identity never occurred to me. The two models of Spanish origin in popular culture were Miss Chiquita Banana and Ricky Ricardo - one, an over-the-top Latina “bombshell” touting her wares, both her bananas and her curvaceous self, and the other the butt of jokes, who brought on an outpouring of canned laughter whenever he opened his mouth. I didn’t know how to talk about who I was, but I knew what made me uncomfortable. From the get-go, my identity wasn’t easy to untangle. I was born in Nueva York, but my parents returned to their homeland when I was a month old. We were vaguely of “Spanish origin,” which was better than the more deprecating slurs of the playground: “spic,” “wetback,” “greaser.” If we had to check a box, the sorry options we were given (“Negro,” “Eskimo,” etc.) didn’t include us. The hyphenated nationality (Dominican-American, Chinese-American, even African-American) hadn’t yet been invented. “Oh, you lucky dog! We went there for spring break!” At least Dominica was in the same neighborhood of islands. ![]() ![]() So when my family was asked where we were from, we couldn’t just say, “We’re Dominican, you know, like Sammy Sosa or Alex Rodriguez.” Our classmates often mistook our country for the other Caribbean nation of Dominica. Back then there weren’t that many Dominicans in the United States - the dictatorship made it difficult to emigrate. No one seemed to know where the Dominican Republic was. One of the baffling things that happened when my family arrived in the United States in 1960 was having to find a term for ourselves. This personal reflection is part of a series called The Big Ideas, in which writers respond to a single question: What do we believe? You can read more essays by visiting The Big Ideas series page. ![]()
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