Disconnected From Your Roots

Tw for mentions of abuse and S/H

If you’re reading this, you probably came from the trend I participated in on my socials involving folks expressing their struggles with being disconnected from their culture. Or maybe you just stumbled upon this randomly. Either way, I welcome you.

My name’s Rosalind, but some of my family know me as Rosalinda.

That doesn’t seem like much of a name change, but I’ll share why it’s important later, and also show how the two are pronounced.

In English, it is Rosalind (Roz-a-lind), and in Spanish, it is Rosalinda (row-sa-lee n-duh)

I’m a Hispanic American of Puerto Rican descent and want to take the time to explain how that affected me in my youth.

My mother grew up in San Juan for most of her teen and young adult years before she made the decision to move back to America. She always talked about how one of her friends teased her, saying she’d, “meet a gringo here, marry him, and never return to the island.”

That she did, and because of that, I am here.

From this context, it’s easy to assume that I am Hispanic from my mom’s side and white from my dad’s side. And aside from the usual “too white to be Hispanic and too Hispanic to be white” issue most mixed people face, there were other problems I had to deal with that I want to shed light on.

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I never connected much with my white side because my dad is a mix of so many things that there was nothing to really celebrate (mostly German and Scottish, but some Irish, Swedish, and Norwegian from what I know) which is why I connected so deeply with my Hispanic side growing up. It was the one thing in my blood that was whole, not a cocktail of untraceable history.

But the way I interacted with my culture was extremely limited. My mom insisted that I get in touch with my roots yet actively prevented me from doing so. Her culture was only ever used when it was convenient for her.

I had a Quinceañera, was taught Spanish, grew up with the food, and celebrated some of the holidays and traditions. Yet my mom made it hardly enjoyable, and I want to show people that sometimes our culture is stripped from us by the very people we get that culture from.

Quinceañera.

My Quinceañera wasn’t even her idea or expectation because she said, and I quote, “I thought you’d find it boring.” So I had to convince her to let me have it. Then she used it as a means to brag to her friends and forced me to accept a bunch of fancy amenities I didn’t want just so we could look rich and prosperous. (The theme was also Harry Potter which I look back on with a bit of shame now as a trans person, but that was before I knew of the things the author did and is generally a topic for another day).

I didn’t have any family or close friends to come, so it was mostly mutuals.

I also didn’t have my chambelanes and damas (a court of 14 boys and 14 girls) because I simply didn’t know enough people willing to be a part of it.

I couldn’t have a date because I knew no boys that would ask me and my parents wouldn’t let me have dates anyway.

I couldn’t pass “the last doll” to any younger siblings because my parents couldn’t have any and my mother blamed her infertility on me. So I passed the doll down to a young girl from my karate class instead.

Luckily, I was able to do the crowning ceremony, father-daughter dance, changing of the shoes, and wear the gaudy gown that weighed like 500 pounds lol.

And although I appreciated the things I did have, it saddened me to see everyone else’s Quinceañera go exactly to tradition which is something I knew I’d never experience.

Food.

I didn’t get to enjoy the cultural food outside of restaurants because my mom refused to season her food at home (ironically) and nuked it until it was inedible. There were very few Spanish foods I remember her making that were actually salvageable including bacalaítos (fried cod fish fritters). As delicious as it was, it was also very greasy and salty, at least the way she made it, and I felt sick after just a few. I remember her boiling it in the hot oil and leaving them to dry on paper towels until the counter and plates were soaked. I always burned my hand trying to eat them because I was too impatient to let it cool down. I’ve tried searching for bacalaítos recently since it was always sold in the Goya aisle of our grocery store, but haven’t found it since.

She used to give me plantain chips all the time too, though she obviously didn’t cook those and just gave me the store-bought ones.

I vaguely remember her making empanadas as well, and they were pretty good. Though she burned them a lot and tried scraping the black crust off. But it was so bad that there wouldn’t be much left of the empanada after she was done scraping it but a discombobulated mess of cheese and dough.

Skin.

I was always told I had an olive undertone, and that seemed pretty obvious to me given how yellow my skin is and how dark I tan, but my mother gaslit me about my skin for years. She would only say I was olive or tan and “mostly Latina” if she wanted to convince me to come to her Hispanic church that I didn’t like. Or the one time I showed her photo evidence of my self-harm cuts because she didn’t believe me and said the photo was fake and taken from Google because the cut arm I showed her was “too pale” and my skin tone irl was darker. (The photo looked pale because cameras don’t pick up my skin tone very well and I also brightened it to make the cuts more visible because I took it in the dark).

But then she would turn around and tell me I was “pale as a ghost” and “more white than anything” if my being white was convenient for her. Like if I experienced racism. She never wanted to admit that I could be oppressed and used my white side as an excuse to erase my Hispanic side and say, “You didn’t experience racism. That person said what they said or did what they did to be racist towards me,” which not only made zero sense but half these people were strangers and didn’t know which of my parents were Hispanic if not both. She just wanted sympathy and to make every situation about her, even if it meant ignoring the issues I faced.

If I ever got makeup, she’d force me to pick the palest shade, insisting I looked more white than olive. And in turn, I’d end up testing makeup that was upwards of ten shades darker than my skin tone because she hated to see me use products like the ones she used. It’s like she felt more entitled to her own race than I did and felt threatened that someone with her same skin tone and hair type lived in the house. She didn’t like the attention taken away from her. She wanted to be the only one to have olive/tan skin and curly hair. Yet she would acknowledge these features on me when it favored her in some way.

I whitewashed myself in my own art for so many years because I was afraid of “offending actual Hispanics” if I didn’t because I was made to feel “not Hispanic enough” by my own mother very often. Which is why I was shocked when people in public would ask me if I was Hispanic because, “I looked it.” I thought I’d never pass, and though I do think I’m white-passing to an extent, I think some folks can easily assume otherwise. Especially other Hispanics. We've got a spidy sense I swear.

But she fucked up my perspective on ethnic features because of her own insecurities which is something I’ll never forgive her for.

Name.

She always said my name in English until I got to my teen years and started interacting with Hispanics from her church who always pronounced it the Spanish way. It made me feel euphoric in a way because I always forgot that my name had been translated at birth. To make it easier for others to pronounce I guess which is ironic given no one could ever pronounce the English version correctly anyway. And as a fun fact, my name means pretty rose :)

While we’re on the topic of names, my mom’s maiden name was a stereotypical Spanish last name. I remember how much she always complained about changing it after marriage (which she didn’t have to do but did so anyway because it’s “traditional) because she hated having a last name that “sounded Italian.” (Her new last name is also a place in Italy). The reason for this is because, again, she wanted her race to be known to everyone. She wanted to be the only Hispanic in the family and hated that she now had a white last name, especially because she had a weird hatred towards Italians, saying they were all mafia and to stay away from them. (That’s a whole other story). But my point is, she wanted to use her race to feel special. She wanted to be the only one in our family with said ethnic background. She couldn’t go out without telling people she wasn’t white. She called every minor inconvenience from others “racism”, misusing the word greatly. She used her race to beg for attention as she did for most things, which made me despise her even more because I wanted to enjoy my race simply to enjoy it, not use it as leverage to brag, so naturally her actions soured my taste in my own ethnicity for a while.

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Remember when I said that: “too white to be Hispanic and too Hispanic to be white” issue that most mixed people deal with? I want to talk about that now since not everything that separated me from my culture was my shit mom.

I don’t know much about my maternal mother’s family because she cut contact with most of them during my childhood. All but her grandmother who berated her for not teaching me Spanish fluently. She was concerned I’d lose touch with my culture, especially given I was in America being raised by a white dad. So my mom would teach me phrases here and there that she had me repeat to my grandmother.

Simple things like, “hola abuela, mi te amo tu.” (I’m sorry if I butchered that translation, I’m going off of memory here 😭)

And then when my great-grandma would try to converse with me, I’d embarrassingly stay quiet because I didn’t understand her, which I don’t think she liked.

I always felt too white for her family.

Language.

I think that whole issue with my great grandma is what led to my mom abusing me for not, “learning the language good enough,” even though she was the one who failed at teaching me.

I think she felt ashamed for disappointing her grandmother and letting me stray too far from my culture. Yet nothing she did helped me learn the language that much. Her abuse isn’t the main subject of today, so I won’t go too deep into that, but to put the situation into perspective, she once tried to choke me and starve me because I didn’t learn an ungodly amount of Spanish words in fifteen minutes.

I eventually learned how to read in Spanish, and memorized a lot of Spanish songs that helped with my pronunciation and accent. Some folks, whether friends or strangers, thought I spoke it fluently as well because of how I pronounced everything, but my skills are rusty now, and even then I couldn’t translate half of the words I read or said. But I couldn’t continue learning the language for years on end because of the awful memories it brought up. It’s only now that I have the desire to learn it again as the memories start to fade, but I sadly don’t have the time anymore.

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Holidays.

I remember as a kid wanting to celebrate the Spanish Holiday: Los Reyes Magos (Three Kings Day). I was really desperate to connect to my roots more and was begging my mom to let me celebrate it. (She was oddly against it for a reason I never figured out, but eventually caved). It was quite boring really. I placed the bowl of grass and water under my bed for the kings’ camels to eat, then woke up to a toy I had really wanted, which was a plastic guitar. That sounds fun in hindsight, but my mother hadn’t put much effort into encouraging the fun and spending time with me/celebrating it with me like parents were supposed to do on that Holiday. We participated in no other traditions for that day other than the grass box and gift-giving. And even then I did it all by myself. And when I showed excitement about my gift, I got a dismissive smile and everyone just forgot about it afterward.

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I think the overall message I want to make here is that not all mixed people and POC have a chance to celebrate their cultures and connect with it the way they want to. On top of facing issues from being mixed and feeling alienated from each race because you’re not “enough” of said race to fit into either group, some of us are disconnected altogether no matter how hard we try and it’s not our fault. Yet it is extremely frustrating. Be patient and don’t judge someone if they don’t know their culture very well because you don’t know the reasoning behind it. Sometimes there’s a larger story behind it.