The Hyphenated Writer
On writing within the hyphen.
Let’s start this essay with a story time: Years ago, I went to a swing dancing event with friends. As with any social dance, it’s typical for strangers to ask each other to dance. I was dancing with a guy and somehow the conversation wandered into our backgrounds. When I told him that I am Hispanic, his first response was:
“You don’t look Hispanic.”
I didn’t react right away, as I was trying to come up with a clever response. He noted my silence and followed up with:
“Do you wish you could look Hispanic?”
Thankfully for him, the song ended and I simply avoided him for the rest of the night.
I am a first-generation American, as both of my parents were not born in the states. My mother was born in Cuba, and came to the US with her family as a preteen. My father was born in Mexico, and came to the US as an adult.1 I was born and raised in Miami, a predominantly Hispanic city. In Miami, the question “where are you from?” always referred to family heritage, and never about American citizenship. I’ve had peers whose heritage was all Cuban, or Cuban/Colombian, or Cuban/Russian, and so on.
We were raised in a bilingual environment, and switching between English and Spanish was second nature. Our schooling was English only, but our homes were Spanglish or Spanish-only. We had relatives and neighbors who only spoke Spanish, whom we could converse with just as easily as our English speaking-only neighbors.
My upbringing gave me a particular experience that we recognized was different from a typical American upbringing. I always got a kick out of those Disney Channel episodes where a preteen girl begs her mom to get her ears pierced, because what do you mean they did not get their ears pierced as a baby? I used to fight my mom about going to slumber parties, because unlike the American parents, no immigrant parent would let their child sleep over at a strangers house.2 Don’t even get me started on my coffee drinking habits as a Cuban-American!
I’ve lived away from home since college, and the further I’ve moved, the more my identity came to scrutiny. I have my share of incidents like the story above, revealing the underbelly of someone’s assumptions:
You don’t look like what I think a Hispanic should look like.
You don’t dress like how I expect a Hispanic should dress.
You don’t act like how I expect a Hispanic should behave.
You speak English well for a Hispanic, or the inverse: I am surprised that you speak Spanish well, because you are American.
And this is particular to my dad’s background (because I guess your average American doesn’t know enough about Cubans to make stereotypes?)
Your dad is Mexican and was in a band, so he must have been in a mariachi band.3
To be clear, there is a difference between ignorance - a lack of exposure to a certain culture, versus arrogance - insisting that you must fit into this presumption I have of your identity, or else I judge you as “not enough.”
They say write what you know, and what I do know is a hyphenated identity. You have one foot in each side of the hyphen, and some days you lean one way more than another. It’s inevitable that my stories will reflect some part of this. The Uprooted Series, Late Night Superstrings, and Eat the Puck features Hispanic-Americans at the forefront.4 In fact, I wrote Eat the Puck for my Puerto Rican goddaughter because she pointed out that the leading ladies in hockey romance stories are almost always blonde hair and blue eyed.
At the same time, the hyphen is only one part of myself. I am also a Catholic, a dancer, a daughter, a sister, a friend. My writing reflects my values, hopes, fears, and dreams alongside the hyphen. Unfortunately, we live in a society that insists on reducing us to either/or, when the reality is both/and.
of reflects on identity and how we carry it as writers:Not to compare myself to [Shonda] Rhymes, but this is my thinking when it comes to my writing on Letters. I am happy to spend my time discussing my identity, while also trying to not have it be the only thing about me. Happy to be the stand-in for “strong, independent Muslim woman”, while also just being Noha, the girl who loves cycling and mango-strawberry-avocado-smoothies and staying up way too late to binge watch prestige tv. I suppose I am trying to have it both ways.
Maybe writing in both/and is a balancing act. If we don’t speak up when our identity is mischaracterized, we perpetuate it. If we do speak up, then people make it our entire personality trait. We cannot control how others perceive us, only what we give to the world.
In the end, I write because I have a unique voice to share. I refuse to let the Hispanic-American experience remain flat and stereotyped. The idea that I cannot write in two languages because it will confuse “the readers,” or that my characters have to act or look a certain way, only serves to silence my voice.
I am not writing for “the readers.” My readers - whoever they are, and wherever they’re from - appreciate and relate to the stories I share. That is the power of authentic writing.
Tl;dr of how my parents met: My mom met my dad while visiting Mexico City (his hometown) as young adults. At that point, my Cuban family had settled in Miami.
Now, I will follow my mom’s example for my future kids. Sorry, not sorry.
He played the bass guitar for a cover band, covering songs from the likes of early Chicago. So, no, not a mariachi band.
Correction: Rudy of Late Night Superstrings is Lebanese. But it takes place in Miami, and the other characters are Hispanic-Americans.