In that moment, I just wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. I wanted to cry, I wanted to run, I wanted to quit. But I knew how much it had taken to get me there, and I could not allow myself to fail. I remember one of my peers writing me a private message after class, saying that what the TA did was not okay and that I should say something to the professor. In his well-intentioned attempt to be an ally, my classmate effectively left me feeling hopeless. There was no way I was going to out myself to our professor as an outsider. And I just kept thinking, did this peer not understand that gatekeepers reflect the institutions? All I have known are gatekeepers, and here the gatekeepers were stricter and more forbidding than any I had before encountered.
Hard work and luck were not going to cut it anymore. What I needed were two college-degreed, upper-middle-class parents who had the advantages of immersing me in a lifetime of leisure visits to museums and art exhibits, home libraries full of advanced books from the Western canon, dinner conversations full of critical and intellectual discussions, and access to parents’ friends to give me mentorships and internships and recommendations and advice.
I began to understand that school in general has a certain student in mind, a wealthier and whiter student. Academia is an entire environment that was built for that student. The gatekeeper I met in high school; he was gatekeeping AP classes but also gatekeeping everything else that came from that type of access. I was not supposed to outsmart my high school guidance counselor; I was not supposed to get past those gates. And still, somehow, I did—and I was starting to realize why there was a gatekeeper to begin with.
Just like BIPOC are overrepresented at the poverty line, we are underrepresented in academia—for the same reasons. I finally understood that it did not take ability and hard work to be where I was. No gatekeeper had decided to create a path for success for people like me; in fact, I was expected to fail. Since institutional support would never materialize, that meant I had to innovate my own strategies for succeeding.
What my high school counselor should have said on that fateful day, and should have said with the full weight of the reality before us, was: “You are not white enough to dream, so do not bother.”
I did not understand that class had everything to do with my sense of panic; I did not understand that class differences created my impostor syndrome. I did not understand that hard work does not always work. In fact it just leaves you exhausted, to your own detriment.
I was recently told by a white man that he pursued a PhD because it was fun for him. People like me do not get degrees for the fun of it; we do it because we believe it will open new doors for us, new opportunities. I felt like I needed a degree for my life to be different, for things to be better.
I was told a college degree was the ticket to a great job, but when I graduated with my bachelor of arts in English literature from FIU, I had zero options. I was qualified for secretarial entry-level positions, and those were the only jobs available to me. I did not have a family friend who could find me a job in the publishing world. I did not have the means to take unpaid internships and hopefully end up with a great job years later. My parents did not have the means to pay my rent somewhere so I could focus on working my way up to a living wage.
Since a bachelor’s degree had zero impact on my marketability for a job, I somehow believed that a master’s degree would give me access to better-paying jobs. I had to make it, and I had to find new strategies. These new strategies came from the kindness of some wonderful people.
During my second semester in graduate school, I received my first D, on a paper I thought I had written flawlessly. As I flipped through the pages, smeared in red ink, I found a note at the end written by New Testament scholar Dr. A. J. Levine, who advised me to go to the writing center.
I was devastated but knew that failing out of graduate school was not an option. So, I made an appointment at the writing center, and when I showed up a few days later I was turned away. The writing center said that my writing errors resulted from the fact that English was my second language, and I was told that they were not “proofreaders.” I was advised to go to the international student writing center. With a broken heart, and my pride down the drain, I made an appointment at the international student writing center. I had not attended a PWI for undergrad, and therefore I could justify this entire writing-center debacle, keeping off some of the blame and retaining some dignity for myself. When I showed up at the international student writing center, I was told that I wrote English fluently. They also said they were short-staffed, so they could not help me since they had to help the other students who were further behind in their English. I was turned away again. I felt like I was going to break. All this class-passing and cordiality was not working. All the hard work and overpreparation was not working. All the tightness that I held within me began to feel like it was strangling me. I was wrecked.
I walked up to my professor who had given me that D and told her the situation. She looked shocked. She also immediately took my side. She personally committed to correcting the grammar, proofreading all my papers, and helping me improve my writing.
I eventually told a dean at my program, who looked equally shocked. Everyone was shocked. They could not believe that this elite institution was creating even more barriers for the diverse students they were so proud to showcase in their pamphlets. The people who make it to these institutions to teach are often so disconnected from the experiences of working-poor people of color that they simply cannot help, because they cannot even fathom the full extent of systemic inequality in this country. They cannot fix what they cannot understand, and in their ignorance they maintain those gates as strong and unmovable.
This is when things began to shift for me; this is when things began to shift within myself. I could not hold all of it together, I could no longer pass, and I was tired.
But the American Myth also provides a means of laying blame. In the Puritan legacy, hard work is not merely practical but also moral; its absence suggests an ethical lapse. A harsh logic dictates a hard judgment: If a person’s diligent work leads to prosperity, if work is a moral virtue, and if anyone in the society can attain prosperity through work, then the failure to do so is a fall from righteousness.
—David Shipler
By my third year, something clicked. I learned that there was a new language, an academic language, that I just did not know. I learned it, to the best of my abilities given the time constraints of our program. And I ended up being okay. I earned occasional As, and learned to accept my Bs and Cs. I learned to use all the anger as fuel to start demanding more from the institution that had so benevolently admitted me while providing so few tools for me to succeed. I eventually became the Student Government Association president of our program, the first Latina to have that peer-elected position in the history of the school. With that position, I got the ball rolling to create a club for Latinx students, and we had access to funds that we got to use to help us succeed.
Over time, I also learned to value my background instead of distancing myself from it. I learned to claim it with pride. I learned that integrating myself into American values and ideals made a difference in my ability to infiltrate academia, which is vastly white and elite. But I also learned that adaptation did not mean that I had to relinquish my love for my roots.
Over time, I learned that my circumstances were not created by me—but also, I learned that I was more powerful than my circumstances. My friends, my community, helped me realize this. I met a handful of BIPOC who were owning where they came from, and who utilized all that experience to fuel their work and writings. I began to see that there was hope. I met a queer, biracial Latina who had been raised in Appalachia, and we valued her keen skills at pickling. This wasn’t a hobby; resources were scarce where she grew up and she knew how to gather and preserve for the winter. She carried that knowledge with pride. Out of little, she had survived—and it made her special, it made her stronger. I met an undocume
nted Latina who had grown up quickly, taking odd jobs at a young age, and after she entered Vanderbilt she spoke out about her struggles to force the institution to look within itself. It’s cruel to expect people who have pushed themselves past gatekeepers to then perform gratitude. Those gates never should have existed in the first place. Those of us who make it into these spaces have to serve as mirrors. We must reflect the realities of their gatekeeping back at them, and remind them that they are not better for allowing us in, but rather that we are remarkable for making it in despite them.
I met people who were rejected by society, and somehow they had used that friction to energize themselves. They did not make themselves small for anyone. They used their accomplishments as armor—not only to break into these institutions but to then to smash the walls and glass ceilings so that more can come through. More of us are needed. Not enough of us have a chance to make it.
I learned how wrong I was to distance myself from those very people who were there to bring me back to life when I felt like nothing was working anymore. I was failing at whiteness, but that didn’t make me a failure. I didn’t need to assimilate with my white, privileged peers; I had to learn survival skills from my BIPOC peers. I learned to lean into those friendships and fight alongside them.
There are always going to be moments when the gatekeepers will try to clip your wings. So here are some reminders, for those times when things get harder and when you’re tempted to see your differences as problems and not solutions.
Some days, you will forget that your mami is brilliant and strong, because she might make herself small around gatekeepers and might not have the same strategies you use for maneuvering in uninviting spaces.
Some days, you will forget that you papi is hardworking and strong, because everyone says that if you work hard enough you will make it, and he works hard every day and has not made it and might never make it.
Some days, you will forget that you are capable, because you are mocked for where you come from and the clothes that you wear.
Some days, you will forget that you are smart and worthy, because you might stutter when you have to speak English in front of a room of native English speakers.
Some days, you will forget that our music is an important contribution to society. Instead, outsiders will call our music spicy and sexy, misunderstanding our people and our resilience in one fell swoop.
Some days, you will forget that your abuelita was sharp and witty, because of her cultural differences.
Some days, you will forget that oppressed communities have been using laughter to deal with our oppression for centuries. Instead, you will be kicked out of restaurants and told you are being too much.
Some days, you are going to be made to feel like you are not good enough to go to their schools. And you have to remember that this has nothing to do with being smart enough or worthy enough. Your feelings of displacement mean that these institutions were not built to include you. They were not built for your betterment or for you to have more opportunities, and they rely on your complicity. Do not play nice. Shine despite them. Use them anyway, because they are actively using you regardless.
Remember that we have been outshining and outliving their low expectations for some time now. And now, we are entering these spaces en masse and showing them what all of this diaspora excellence looks like. It is their strategy to make us forget. It is their strategy to keep us at bay, keep us quiet. They will use every tool in their gatekeeper fanny pack to stop us.
But you are the sum of generational resistance.
You are the sun, the moon, and the motherfucking stars.
You have never stopped being great; your ancestors have always been great and you are here because of them. Do not allow these gatekeepers to make you forget.
We must remember the years of historical evidence and national traumas in our home countries that show us what is really happening. Research the history of Chiquita bananas, the forced sterilizations in California, the children in cages at the border, the Panama Canal, the forced pipelines on Indigenous lands, the Tuskegee experiment, the AIDS epidemic, Henrietta Lacks, the syphilis experiments in Guatemala, and international trade policies like NAFTA and CAFTA.
Remember that there are systems in place that stay in place because we are so busy doubting ourselves. Remember that we need to make demands and take back our humanity.
I have to actively remind myself, on those tougher days, that my Brownness is beautiful and brilliant. I have to actively remind myself that meritocracy is a lie, told by powerful white people, meant to keep people like me busy, docile, and quiet.
Remember that you deserve to be here, and you deserve to take up space, and you deserve to make demands of your schools, workplaces, governments, and institutions. For all of us.
Remember who you are, and the rest will come.
CHAPTER 5
POLITICS OF RESPECTABILITY
I am exhausted.
I learned quickly when I enrolled at my PWI that I had to be extraordinary. I had to be special, to justify occupying my seat at this elite institution. And when I graduated, I could not waste all the effort that I put into that degree; I had to make something of myself and I had to do it well. I had to dot all my i’s and cross all my t’s if I was going to be worth anyone’s time.
I felt pressure to speak and write Spanish fluently, lest I be criticized for not being in touch with my roots.
Not only that, but I have to speak the highly enunciated, “acceptable” Spanish. You cannot just speak Spanish; you have to speak the selected version of Spanish that someone decided was superior to the others. I also had to learn to allow my tongue to relax and let out a “chavala” from time to time, to remind myself of where I came from and how my countrypeople speak Spanish. I had to practice both, like there was a test that I was told I was going to fail but I still spent all my time practicing for anyway. Once you allow yourself to become palatable, you can get lost, so I knew that I had to keep my Nica slang within me, even if just in private.
I have to speak and write English flawlessly. What is minimally accented English good for if you cannot write it well? “Well” as defined by academics, “well” as defined by upper-middle-class white people, “well” as defined by spaces that are meant to exclude you. And then the parameters for “proper” English are also rigorous. I have to be fluent in the big-words-nobody-can-really-understand-except-a-select-few-elites English to be respected in academia. Not only that, but I had to figure out how to pronounce these words before I had ever heard them spoken out loud. I was the kid who devoured books and encountered words I had never heard before—and then practiced saying those words privately first, in hopes of not embarrassing myself publicly. And I had to become comfortable with doing all of that.
I have to also be able to switch back to my Miami-English. In my Miami-English, my accent gets to come out more and my tongue gets to rest a bit. To be relevant in the region I was raised in, I needed to keep that.
I have to be soft and kind and approachable, because for Black and Brown people to succeed, to play the game, to make it, we need to make white people feel “comfortable” around us. White people tend to feel most comfortable around people who look like them, who dress like them, who sound like them—people they can recognize.
I have to be gentle and smart, and all my actions have to overtly signal my respectability. I have to perform a version of myself perfectly to prove my humanity. As a woman, as a smart woman, my duty is to signal to people that I am smart and somehow, accidentally, I happen to be a woman. I have to be just the right amount of angry to be respected and taken seriously. And I have to do this signaling with what I wear, how I adorn my face with makeup, and how I do my hair. Nothing too feminine, nothing too sexy, nothing that could indicate that I might have a body and a brain.
The delicate dance required to make my white peers feel safe sucked the life out of me. And even when I was trying to not “be the issue” or “cause dr
ama,” I still got the same responses:
“You’re taking things too seriously.”
“It’s not always about race.”
“Not all white people…”
“Not my experience…”
“I have a Latina friend.”
“Are you sure that is what happened?”
This is white peoples’ coded language for: “You’re being too aggressive,” or “You’re being too Brown,” or “You’re making me uncomfortable about my racism.” Instead of addressing their own issues, they will vilify you.
White people will go out of their way to claim themselves as victims, as if the entire system is not built for their benefit.
You have to be ready for those moments and not let them disarm you. I want these white people to know that I have agency, even when we all know they wrote the playbook. I have to make them believe in my devotion to success, even though success is measured entirely on their terms.
The pressure to fit into all these boxes was suffocating. I felt pressured to be a lot of things for a lot of people.
When I say I have to be extraordinary, what I mean is that:
I was the first in my family to go to college, and was fully funded.
I was the first in my family to present at an academic conference.
I was the first in my family to graduate with honors from college.
I was the first in my family to move away from Miami, the only city we lived in other than Managua.
I was the first in my family to get accepted into a graduate program.
I was the first in my family to get a graduate degree.
For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts Page 9
