Heinz 57

You get double the fun today: Two blog entries! Woo!

The previous post inspired this one. At book club, we were talking about what the word Chicano meant. Everyone sort of looked to me for an answer since I'm the only semi-brown person in the club. But the truth is, I didn't know. One of the members said she looked it up and the definition she found was a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent -- a Mexican-American.

Ok. I'll add it to the list.

Then we got into a conversation of whether or not that was an appropriate description of Mexican-Americans. Some people don't like it. They prefer to be called Mexican-American, or Latino/a, or Hispanic. I don't really care one way or the other, but Hispanic doesn't mean anything, so using that one equates ignorance in my book.

When people ask me what I am, my answer is "half-Mexican, half-white." (Which is a stupid way to break it down, but it's easier than the real answer.)

The real answer is this: My father's mother descends from the Spanish Canary Islanders who originally settled the city I live in (which a little Googling will help you figure out, but I'm still not telling), plus a little French mixed in there; my father's father has roots in indigenous Mexico/Central/South America... Mayan, we think; my mother's parents can trace their lineage back to England and Wales.

So, mostly European with a generous helping of Native American.

Most people like to guess what I "am" before I tell them. The majority guess Latina, which is kind of cheating since there are a damn lot of ethnicities that fall under that umbrella. But I've also heard French, Italian, Greek, and even Asian! (That last one was after I picked up some Chinese food to-go and the woman asked if I needed chopsticks. I told her that I had some at home and she literally scrutinized my face while asking if I was part-Asian.) At book club I heard Irish for the first time. So... Heinz 57 varieties, it seems.

This has been an issue for me my whole life, but especially when I was kid. My friends who were white always saw me as non-white, and my friends who were brown always saw me as white. I, like Antonio in the book, never really felt completely sure of my place on either side. Now it's not such a big deal, but it still comes up every once in a while.

I look at it differently as an adult than I did as a kid. Back then I felt watered down, for lack of a better description. Like I was only ever a half of something and not a whole. It felt like a disadvantage. Now, I feel like I have the best of both worlds. It's like I know things other people don't; like I have a secret. I don't feel any more connected than I did growing up -- there are definitely a lot of things I don't know about Mexican culture, including, sadly, a firm grasp of the language -- but I've made my peace with it.

I might just be two halves that don't really fit together, but at least they are two good, solid halves.