When I first came to UMass, I was worried that I would not find the right major and regret my choice after four years. After many advising meetings, I decided to pursue and public health and Spanish double major. We have all been told that being fluent in another language would benefit us in our future so majoring in Spanish made sense. However, I am also fluent in Portuguese and was raised by parents who immigrated to the United States from Brazil. My feelings towards my family heritage have always been something that I have struggled with. When I was younger I did not appreciate the language barrier and felt different from all of my American friends. I was also constantly deterred from speaking in Portuguese with my Brazilian friends because people would wrongfully assume that we were talking poorly about them. After growing up in a diverse town, I moved to a majority-white small town for high school. There I was confronted head-on of how different I felt around people who grew up privileged and followed a culture that seemed so unfamiliar to me. Although I was raised in the United States, my home is everything but “American.” I only began to truly value my heritage once I realized that although I was a minority, my culture was what led me to become the person I am today and was grateful that I did not stray from the culture despite several societal attempts to deter me from my familial customs.

The transition to a majority-white university made me worry about whether I would find a community of people that I could relate to. Shortly after adjusting to my classes and not meeting any Brazilians, I decided to meet with a Portuguese advisor to learn about different programs that would provide a way for me to continue using the language frequently and to learn about the culture. The following semester I enrolled in Intensive Portuguese for Spanish Speakers in order to practice my grammar and get the formal education of the language that I never got due to only speaking Portuguese and using informal writing with my parents and friends.

Throughout college, I have also taken Brazil through Film and Fiction, a Brazilian seminar, and a teaching heritage speakers Portuguese course. Brazil through Film and Fiction was by far my favorite course taken at UMass. It taught me aspects of the Brazilian culture that I had never been exposed to. We began from the beginning when the Portuguese first colonized Brazil and ended with current Brazilian social and political issues. After this course, I felt more informed of how the Brazilian identity has been shaped throughout history and how the pressing issues in Brazil today developed and why they continue to be unresolved. The Brazilian seminar class consisted of several Brazilian faculty members to come and talk about their research ranging from systematic racism to a nuclear physicist’s participation on a worldwide project. This course helped me find a connection to people in the community who use their Portuguese in the professional world. Additionally, the heritage teaching course was a wonderful experience that put my knowledge of the language to the test as we taught children at a local Springfield church the basic grammar structure. Throughout each of these classes, I was given an opportunity to meet other Brazilians and found a new community of people that I could relate to.

My family has never taught me about the depth of Brazilian society, but after taking these courses, specifically Brazil through Film and Fiction course I began to understand the development of the Brazilian identity. Luiz Amaral was the professor and he taught us about how Brazilians are influenced by the indigenous culture, the Portuguese, and various different cultures from Africa. This combination of cultures came together and gave Brazilians a unique identity. However, this mixture of cultures led to the development of a societal race hierarchy and interestingly over time many Brazilians from each region have begun to identify themselves differently. There has been such a mixture of races in Brazil that in a survey it was found that in one community people had over 500 different mixed races and rarely any individuals identified themselves as only Afro-Brazilian or indigenous. This has made it increasingly difficult for these minority groups to gain support for equality. Personally, I was so blinded by only the Brazilian culture I was raised in that I did not recognize the systematic racism present in Brazil and how although it differs greatly from racism in the United States, it has essentially been the root of many social and economic problems that the country continues to struggle with.

My advice to any Brazilian coming to UMass interested in remaining in touch with our Brazilian culture is to take an upper-level Portuguese class. If you are majoring in Spanish, two Portuguese classes can count for the major and will give you a chance to meet other Brazilians in the community. If you are like me and were raised speaking Portuguese but never received a formal education, taking the intensive Portuguese class helped me to expand my vocabulary and write formally which can be useful in any professional environment.