Writing the Self 

!Asi no se dice! ​My family in Mexico would belter out in the midst of laughter as they 
nitpicked my less than perfect Spanish. When I said “​cabo” ​instead of “​cuepo”,​ the mistake 
followed with an onslaught of other Spanish words my family wanted to “test” me on, if only to 
give themselves a good laugh. It was an elementary mistake, one that my two year old cousin 
would make every now and then. A mistake that slipped out before I could stop it.  
I understand their Spanish perfectly. It’s not like the Spanish in a little ​pueblo​ in Durango 
was going to be overly complicated. But slang and simple grammar errors happened all too many 
times. 
So then my Mexican family, who only speaks Spanish, asks why I’m so shy. ​¿Que? ¿No 
habla? ​They spoke to each other like if I couldn’t understand. When friends visited the family 
home they would ask my grandparents about me, but not ask me personally. They spoke about 
me constantly, and I could understand every word. I began to feel like a child again, learning a 
new tongue and being stuck on how to properly say it. But when my baby cousin got a word 
wrong, my family would smile and correct him. And he would consistently make the mistake 
again, just to make the family gleeful. But I was seventeen then. And every mistake came with 
mockery instead of understanding. It came with embarrassment instead of happiness. It came 
with a heavy weight of discouragement.  
So even though my family never directly asks me, the girl without a tongue, about why 
she says nothing, I always just think about how I would love to speak in paragraphs and essays. 
But having no words to express myself left me vulnerable to their games.  
To them it was a game. It was a joke. Their way to lighten the mood. Mexican familial 
traditions have friendly mockery. Like when my mom would call me ​“gordita”​ and poke at my 
stomach. But an attack on my language and the way I speak was an attack on my identity as an 
American. And it felt bad.  
I love Mexico. And my Mexican family. With all my heart. But I never feel like I belong 
there. I feel like a foreign guest sometimes as opposed to actual family. Not only do I not live 
there, but I also lack the confidence to speak fully in a language my family would understand. I 
feel less “Mexican” because of it. Because I can’t speak Spanish confidently or without an accent 
or without small mistakes, I’m not Mexican. Because I can’t laugh along with my family’s jokes 
about me, I’m not Mexican. Because I am a “​gringa​”, I’m not Mexican. There seems to be an 
unofficial list of rules to being truly Mexican. And by failing Spanish, I immediately fail 
everything else.  
I wanted to speak so badly. I felt like my tongue was jamming at the confines of my 
mouth, trying to push my teeth even further out past the overbite that already gives me a lisp. So 
I took four years of Spanish in highschool. But it was all trash. None of those phrases and 
“vosotros”​ are used in my family’s Mexican hometown. So even with education under my belt, 
my pants kept falling.  
So what do you do when you want to belong so badly, but your own cultural background 
in a separate country from your core family is the very wall that separates the borders? I want to 
live on both sides, as a Mexican-American and an American-Mexican, but how? I was born in 
America, raised in America, and feel most comfortable with English.  
How do I find the courage to speak Spanish and fit-in when my own family seems to be 
against me? It should be easy. Just speak. But I guess it’s not that simple with them. And just a 
moment of mockery, made me question myself to the point of silence, in a culture I have always 
wanted to belong in.  
The event made me think more in depth about this. It’s always better to laugh with a 
group of people than to be the one being laughed at. And that’s what I wanted. In order to do that 
I needed to stop making elementary mistakes that could be picked on. But most of all, I realized 
that I wanted to learn the language of my Mexican community so that I could explain my 
struggle to them. I still live with this desire. To one day go to Mexico and have the ability to tell 
my family why it is mean to laugh at someone struggling to learn. And how it silences them.