Bicultural, bilingual, bisexual…as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to slowly grow into my identities as a queer and bisexual person, as being Latinx in the US, and having Mexican and Nicaraguan heritage. I’m thinking more critically and deeply about who I am and where I fit in- emerging with far more questions than answers, but growing nonetheless.
When I was eighteen, in my first semester at UMass, I showed up nervous and shy at “An Honest Dialogue about Queer Latinx Experience,” an event co-hosted by the Stonewall Center and Latinos Unidos. My brother had heard about it and half jokingly told me to “go find my people.” Knowing my insecurity and reluctance to put myself out there at the time, he texted me to make sure I had gotten there okay. Over the course of the event I started to come out of my shell a bit as the group listened and shared experiences of family, cultural identity, childhood, gender, coming out and growing up.
I was happy to have been there, but walking home that night I thought: ‘there are too many parts of myself, too many nuances, too many manifestations. I won’t ever fit into one space or one career. I won’t ever fit in with any one person.’ At the time this felt like a melancholy realization, but reflecting on it now, I think my perspective has changed somewhat. I have realized that each experience, interest and identity I have makes up who I am, and the wide scope of it all gives me the opportunity to see more, to understand more, to start more conversations and ask more questions.
One reason I have loved being a Spanish major so far is because it has supported me in this discovery. Last year I researched the suppression of queerness and non-normative masculinity in post-civil war Spain. During my freshman year, I had a lively discussion with a classmate about the Paulina Rubio and Shakira songs we listened to as kids, in a course all about grammar. In my sophomore year, I often stayed after class to talk about Mercedes Sosa songs with one of my professors. Most of all, I learn from the other students around me every single semester. For one thing, we are all learning the language in unique ways. Some are heritage speakers less experienced in writing, others have learned Spanish entirely in school and want to improve their conversational skills, others like me have learned in both school and family contexts- or any combination of these things and we all have a lot of room to grow. Hearing from and working with them has helped me realize that we are all incredibly complex, but it’s those complexities that will make us stronger and more empathetic in the work we do later on.
In my case, I hope to pursue something in the realms of social work, labor organizing or education- or perhaps more than one of those- ideally collaborating with other Spanish speaking workers and communities. I hope that my own identities and experiences will help and encourage me to find new connections, even where they may be unexpected.
