Latinas: A Social and Cultural Survey

Option 1-  Using examples both from the short story within the reading by Yomaira Figueroa (“Story: Your Lips”) and one of the short stories by Kali Fajardo-Anstine (“Sugar Babies” or “Sabrina & Corina), what do you see as the role of family in accepting and embracing one’s racial and/or ethnic identities? How does communication (or lack thereof) play into the understanding one has of who they are and how they are seen by others? How do family expectations influence how the narrators see themselves?

The role of family can be huge in somebody accepting their racial/ethnic identities. Many Latino families try to deny their Afro part of the Afro-Latino. In my Dominican culture, we see this prevalent in the form of the women always wanting to straighten their hair, letting it grow long, dyeing it often, eating a certain way to maintain a certain figure, amongst many others. In the short story “Your Lips” by Yomaira Figueroa, the narrator says “Your sister Nelly wore it against her pale skin and long copper hair which she dyed religiously. Nelly was so serious it stung and she held a dagger stare that pierced every family photo. The tias agreed that she was the most beautiful of the nieces(Figueroa, 6-7).” This simple example from the story displays how The women in the family saw Nelly as the most beautiful niece. She was pale, had long hair, and would wear the popular trendy lipstick. Following with western beauty standards was visually pleasing to the tias. “Nelly and Carmen were peeling platanos in the sink, trying not to splash the water onto their clothes for fear of black manchas(Figueroa, 7)”. This line from the story stood out to me the most. Platanos are a staple in both the Latino and the African community. I believe what Figueroa was attempting to say here is that Latinos try to hide and push away their blackness, they don’t want to be “stained”(manchas in english) by it. Nelly most likely surrounds how she wants to present herself according to what she was taught by her family, the tias, so she wouldn’t have “manchas” from her black side and could adhere to western beauty standards. With Latino families struggling to accept their Afro sides as well, they can potentially miseducate their younger generations on that side of them, or not educate them at all. This can cause them to be out of touch with their culture racially speaking, and completely deny that side of them.

In the short story “Sabrina and Corina” by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Corina is completely disregarded in the passing of her cousin, Sabrina. Their family treats her like she isn’t a person affected by Sabrina’s death as well. “Nonsense.” My grandmother smacked the table. “Put the makeup on Sabrina and make sure she looks good. Pay special attention to her neck(Fajardo-Anstine, 29)”. Sabrina was considered to be the pretty cousin, so it is possible that Corina was treated as such because of this. This can be detrimental to a person’s(like Corina’s) mental health, as you are taught/shown by your family that you don’t deserve empathy or comfort, and that you can be dehumanized for not fitting into their ideal image of you. I experienced this myself on vacation during spring break. My uncle died while I was there, and at the funeral my dad didn’t hug me or comfort me at all, while he did to other people. He disregarded the fact that I was grieving too. Family plays a key role in laying the foundation of embracing your ethnicity and culture.

It is up to each individual person at a certain point to then educate themselves and embrace their identity as a whole, not just the parts that they were told to embrace or that is convenient to them. This isn’t only prevalent in Latino culture, we see this in other cultures as well. Many people can grow up to be insecure if they don’t look a certain way, all stemming back to the standards their family showed and taught them. This can hinder them from communities, jobs, relationships, that they could flourish in had they embraced their race/ethnicity as a whole.