American Like Me

by America Ferrera

  This struggle—and the grief of mourning for the elder I would not be home to bury—led me to an epiphany. I realized I could use my little home village as a positive motivation rather than a negative one. Yakutat was not the opposite of my success. It was the source of my success. And if I was going to be so far away from it, I needed to work harder than ever to make my acting dreams come true.

  Fast-forward to today, and I’ve been lucky to work with some of the same actors and directors I idolized when I was younger. If you would have told me in high school that I would one day be in a movie with the same Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke from Training Day—and that I would get to help create a Native character to portray in that movie (The Magnificent Seven), I never would have believed you. But storytelling has always been my calling. I’ve been given a gift from the Creator, and it is a great honor to tell stories of ordinary people whose journeys and struggles should be shared with the world, because they matter. I have been even more lucky to have a platform through the Native Wellness Institute and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America to speak to kids who grew up like I did. I tell them to follow their dreams and that if they stay in their small towns, they still matter. They can still do good work wherever they are. And every Native kid I’ve ever met tells me I’m their favorite character in The Magnificent Seven (except my nephew, who ranks me third, behind Denzel Washington’s and Chris Pratt’s characters). But he sent me a photo of himself dressed as Red Harvest for Halloween, and it meant the world to me.

  Now when I visit home, I make sure to stay for weeks at a time. I play basketball with my old friends, eat the moose from my mother’s freezer that was hunted by my eight-year-old nephew. I go camping, fishing, or just drive the back roads by myself. It is quiet, peaceful, and a part of me forever. When I walk the streets with my dog, people always smile at me and say, “Welcome home!”

  Carmen Carrera

  Carmen Carrera is a mother, an actor, a model, an advocate, and one of the world’s highest-profile transgender women. As an actor, she has appeared in HBO’s Outpost, Jane the Virgin, The Bold and the Beautiful, and Ricki and the Flash. Carmen is a dedicated international human rights and HIV prevention advocate. She has lectured around the world and works with organizations like SUEÑOS LGBT to fight discrimination against young transgender women.

  A Letter to My Ten-Year-Old Self

  Dear Chris,

  You are ten years old, and I thought I would write you a letter because there are some things I want you to know. First, you are beautiful. Right now, exactly the way you are. In the future you are beautiful too. In fact, you will grow up to become a strong, proud, beautiful Latinx woman. A model and an activist. Yes, you!

  Right now I’m guessing you are finding this hard to believe. You want to feel comfortable in your skin, but you are surrounded by beautiful women who see you as their little boy. You hide your femininity even though femininity is everywhere—within you and constantly surrounding you. Literally radiating from these four beautiful Peruvian angels: your great-grandmother (La Mama), grandmother (Grandma Chela), mother (Mommie), and sister (Arissa). It is only a matter of time before they fully see inside your heart and soul.

  You are just like them. Strong. They came to this country with just their religious beliefs and the strength to carry God and responsibility on their shoulders at all times. In your grandmother’s culture, being a strong woman means being a good mom and a good wife. This seems complicated to you—to become a woman who fits that mold. But that’s okay. Because, trust me, you will make your own mold. And you will do it without discarding the traditions that made you who you are.

  You will never lose your love of your Peruvian culture, the food, and the stories. You will always taste the richness of papa a la huancaína, smell the bright spices, see the bold yellow shades of turmeric in the sauce. You will reach for the same alfajores cookies when you are grown up and savor them your whole life. They remind you of family and love. You will always remember the Sundays at La Tia Delia, the Peruvian restaurant where your community would gather after church. You will never discard this part of yourself. In fact, you will reconnect with it and find some of the most important parts of yourself within it. You will always savor the stories your grandmother told you about the strong Inca warriors, the architects, the farmers, the spiritual builders of magical places you will visit one day in Peru. You will build something one day too, your grandmother told you.

  And you will.

  But in the meantime, I want you to look at your mother. She has broken the mold, and she is building something too. Right now. Take a look at what she is doing. Raising you and your sister without the help of a man. Working several jobs to make ends meet. Doing the best she can to give you your middle-class life in New Jersey. Did you know she was only a child herself when she came to America? Maybe she was trying to be the woman her religion wanted her to be when she married so young and had your sister, enduring hardship and abuse along the way. But then she divorced and found your father. He was addicted to drugs and disowned by his family since he was only thirteen years old. Living on the streets, alone and afraid. He saw an angel in your mother too. A fair-skinned, lovely Peruvian angel. They were so deeply in love and she tried so hard to save him. But she couldn’t do it. And then they had you before he slipped away, taken by an epidemic that even an angel could not erase.

  And when you were born, you entered a world of women. You have been working so hard to please them, to perform well at home as the only boy in the house, and as the child of immigrants at school. You run extra hard in gym class—the place where you are the most insecure. So unsure of your body, afraid of how others see you. You are afraid of the authority figures, the parents, the grandparents, the uncles, the godfathers, the teachers, the nuns. You are nervous of how they see you. So you pour your heart and soul into making straight A’s—you’ll do anything to see your exhausted mother beam. But when you are older you will realize you don’t have to be the best of the best in every single class to make your mother smile. Damaging your grades will not damage her love for you. She smiles when you bring her straight A’s not because of the A’s. She smiles because you are smiling. She has so much on her mind, and she is always working so hard, but seeing you smile will always make her smile.

  You keep hearing the same refrain she must have heard when she came to America. If you work hard and follow the rules, it will all work out. But being a transgender first-generation American like you means you are usually going against all the rules. No matter how many A’s you make, you are still breaking the rules. You were born to a family who defies borders, and in a body that resists rules. When you got kicked out of Catholic school for kissing your crush Anthony on the cheek, you were not breaking your rules. You were breaking their rules. You felt shame when the teacher lectured your mother. You felt so guilty that you scrubbed the chalkboard as you listened. As if to clean up your mess. But you have not made a mess. I am not ashamed of you.

  So forget their rules. Go to that place where you can love yourself, where you see yourself as you are. Close the door in your mother’s bathroom and feel safe in that mirror, wearing her makeup, wrapping your hair in your T-shirt. Turn on the boom box and blast the R & B, the Selena, the JLo. I wish you could open the door and let your mom and sister in on all the fun. I wish you didn’t have to go to bed hoping and praying every single night that you would wake up the next day a girl. I wish you didn’t have to ask yourself Was I born in the wrong body? Was I born in the wrong country?

  Trust yourself, listen to yourself. I love that your beauty icons do not exist in magazines. They are right in your own family. If you were to emulate anyone, it would be Melissa, your oldest cousin, with her edgy beauty, her gorgeous tattoos, and her Peruvian face. Or your mother—her name is Carmen, a name you will borrow one day—with her smart business clothing and her lovely smiling face that seems to be made of pure light.

  You have found what makes you feel beautiful. It
is not the socks your grandmother gives you for Christmas every year because no one knows how to buy clothing for you. It is not even your obsession, Buffy the Vampire Slayer herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar. It is your beautiful mother, her name, her face. It is driving to the beach with her in her sports car, turning up the pop music, feeling the wind in your hair. When you grow up, you will look like her. Your uncles will say, Oh my god, you even act like her. All of the pieces of the puzzle will come together, and you will feel authentic one day. And you won’t have to wear makeup to be pretty. You won’t have to dress sexy to be a woman. You don’t have to change to be you.

  You can hold on to where you came from. What made you, you. A line of strong Peruvian women. Always come back to the love that brought you here. Come back to it, even when you think they won’t accept you. Even when you fear they are ashamed of what makes you different. If you need love, there is no one better than your family. Invest in your bond with them, and help them understand who you really are.

  Sometimes it will be hard for your mother to watch you grow up and become who you are. In her eyes right now, you are your dad’s only son. Your dad is gone, and she is still in love with him. So losing her son will be hard. But it’s okay to hold your mother accountable. It is her job to love you. And when you need her because you miss your father so deeply, or because you feel alone—she will be there for you. Tell her you need her. Her mothering will kick in and she will help her child. Not her gay son. Or her trans daughter. Her child.

  And if you are nervous about coming out when you get older, here’s my advice. Be very perceptive and even more brave. Braver than you are every single time you get grouped with the boys at school and have to converse with them in their foreign language of boyness. Braver than when you have to undress near them before gym. Braver than the time they put your locker right next to the boy you are madly in love with, and the gym coach called you out for crushing on that boy. Pointing his finger at you so everyone would laugh. And everyone would know.

  Here’s what you must do to bravely come out: When you are older, bring home your most confident and “out” friend, the one who inspires you to be yourself. Invite him to sit next to your grandmother at dinner. Allow him to shine for everyone to see. Watch the faces of your family members as they soak him in. As they see him for who he really is—a proud, funny, loud gay man. How do they respond? Measure the amount of work you will have to do to open their hearts and minds to really see you too.

  And then do it.

  I know you can do it.

  Be proud of who you are. You will be explaining yourself to curious or nervous people for the rest of your life. Be visible. This will change the world. Help other kids see themselves in you. There are so many more like you. You are not alone.

  Find a way to walk proud. To be comfortable in your skin. Find the girl in the bathroom mirror. Celebrate her. Build something, just like your grandmother said.

  Go to Peru for the very first time, and bring your grandmother to the party celebrating your magazine cover in her country. The cocktails, the lights, the Peruvian celebrities all around. The meet-and-greet with hundreds of your fans in a country you’ve never even been to. But it is your country too. You share it with your grandmother. It is the country where she will see you for the first time as Carmen Carrera, the Peruvian-American model and activist. You will find yourself in every breath you take there. You will feel your power when you speak to the LGBTQ kids there. You will feel the spirit, the soul, the connection to this place and to yourself.

  Imagine this. One day you will go to the judge, file the paperwork, jump through all their hoops, undergo all their evaluations, write the check, and wait for the paper to come in the mail. On February 21, 2017, you will open the envelope that contains your new birth certificate, your legal gender, your legal name. You will open the door to a whole new life. You will answer your own question. No, you were not born in the wrong body, you were just born to be born anew.

  Welcome to the world, Gabriella Costa-Roman.

  Honoring your father with the name Roman and your mother with the name Costa. Because she named you Christopher, meaning bearer of Christ, the one who carried the Christ child across the river. And Gabriella means woman of God. Congratulations, you no longer have to carry him on your back. You are finally allowed to be you.

  But you’re already allowed to be you. Right now. I promise. So get comfortable. Get excited. A beautiful world is waiting for you.

  Love,

  Gabbi xoxo

  PHOTO BY NONYEM ADUBA

  A formidable talent to be reckoned with, Uzo Aduba is an award-winning actress whose work spans television, film, and theater. Aduba currently stars as Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren in the critically acclaimed Netflix original series Orange Is the New Black.

  Uzo Aduba

  MY NIGERIAN PARENTS WERE very committed to giving me and my four siblings a well-rounded American upbringing. We grew up in a small New England town and were encouraged in whatever we did, as long as we worked hard. I have a freakishly strong work ethic, and it comes from my mother. In school, I was in track, theater, choir, and was also a competitive ice-skater outside of school. There could not have been a sport more foreign to my mother, but she was always so steadfast in her support. I can still see her sitting through my practices in the rink, dressed in more layers than all the other parents and gripping the sides of her arms to keep warm. Nigerians, in my experience, are always cold in Massachusetts.

  She was and still is a graceful and dignified woman. She always carried herself in a very different way from most American moms I knew. She never talked down to us or tried to mimic our speech the way some parents do when they converse with young children. She seemed to glide around the room, speaking to us like we were her royal subjects. And I mean that in a good way, because she always seemed positively regal to me. She had two master’s degrees that she had acquired in Nigeria before I was born. She used to tell us that her university was the Harvard of Nigeria and that it was no accident she had been accepted there. I never doubted her for a second.

  She raised us to speak Igbo, which is my parents’ native language, but she was also very serious about our English. She speaks the loveliest, most refined English of anyone I know. She has the vocabulary and syntax of a professor, and that beautiful, lilting Nigerian accent, which sounds so gorgeous to me. So much better than my own American accent. But of course, as a child I was sometimes embarrassed of her accent. There weren’t many African-Americans in our town, much less immigrants who walked around sounding like royalty. She was a rarified unique thing. But back then, I would roll my eyes every time she rearranged a sentence to avoid ending on a preposition. And her vocabulary was so expansive. Sometimes she would use an exotic, multisyllabic word like persnickety or deciduous or gallivanting, and I would argue with her that she was making up words.

  She would blink her eyes slowly and smile at me. “Go look it up in the dictionary, my dear.”

  When I would try to correct her pronunciation or suggest she use more informal language around my friends, she would refuse to adjust.

  “Mom, no one talks that way,” I would whine and plead.

  She would not appear even the slightest perturbed: “I speak the Queen’s English. You people are the ones not speaking proper English.”

  Even though her way of talking annoyed me, I would immediately defend it when anyone else ever pointed out her quirks. Inside I knew it was part of her strength and power.

  “That’s the Queen’s English,” I would say to the offender. “She speaks it correctly. We don’t.”

  I got a lot of blank stares.

  The full name she gave me is Uzoamaka, which of course no one could ever say correctly. I became fed up with teachers butchering the pronunciation and kids making fun of it, so one day, I approached her in the kitchen while she was cooking (which is where she is located in so many of my childhood memories). I proposed she start calling me Zoe instead.<
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  “Why?” she said with such elegant disdain.

  “Because no one can say Uzoamaka!” I said.

  Without even looking up from the giant pot she was stirring, she replied, “If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky and Michelangelo and Dostoevsky, then they can learn to say Uzoamaka.”

  I didn’t know what a Dostoevsky was, but I knew it was the end of the conversation about Zoe.

  She was proud of our Nigerian heritage and made it a priority that her children would have a chance of feeling this pride too. She and my father took us to Igbo meetings every Saturday in nearby Boston so we could hang out with other Nigerian-Americans in the area. We’d eat big feasts of Nigerian food, and kids would gather for language lessons. We got an education in Nigerian culture and history. And best of all, we got to play with other Nigerian-American kids, the likes of which I never saw in my own town or school.

  I used to marvel as I’d look around the room to see all the adults dressed in traditional Nigerian clothing. My parents were very integrated into American life, adopting a regular Western wardrobe most of the time, but they still delighted in wearing traditional Nigerian clothing too. Compared to regular drab and denim American garb, Nigerian clothing is bright, colorful, and alive. The women would wear ashoke—beautiful woven cloth fabric skirts, or wrappers as we call them, and blouses in bright jewel tones. On their heads they wore ichafu—fabric wrapped in a sculptural way around their heads. There was always, always jewelry—not a woman without it. The necklaces and earrings were made of gold, sapphire, or thick chunky strings of coral. Nigerians aren’t afraid of color, style, and rich fabrics—Ankara prints in vibrant African patterns and motifs; intricate, heavy laces; and other fine, textured cloths. To my eyes, a roomful of Nigerians dressed in traditional clothing always looked magical, joyful, and regal. And being among other Igbo people on the weekends made me feel as if I were rooted in something bigger and greater than myself or the small town I lived in.