Empowering Latinas… One Woman at a Time LATINA Magazine.
Subscribe to rhe Magazine Advertise with Us Blog Contact Us Latina style Inc Magazine Home
Columns & Departments
Publisher’s Message
Lexus Presents Latinas Today
Automotive
USHLI National Conference by Southwest Airlines Co.
Financial: Creating and Measuring Customer Experience
Health: Take Good Care of Your Body
Latina Letters from the Front!
World Travel: Malaysia, Truly Asia
About the Author
Events & Occasions
College Beat
Cara a Cara - Evaluating Obama’s Agenda: By Maria Cardona, Principal, Dewey Square Group
Cara a Cara - Evaluating Obama’s Agenda: By Leslie Sanchez, Founder/CEO of Impacto Group LLC
His View
¡Punto Final!
Digimag Edition
Email:
About the Author
Redefining the American Dream

By Raquel Cepeda

Raquel Cepeda is an award-winning journalist, cultural activist, and documentary filmmaker. A former magazine editor, her byline has appeared in The Village Voice, CNN.com, the Associated Press, and many others. Cepeda directed and produced Bling: A Planet Rock, the critically acclaimed documentary about American hip-hop culture’s obsession with diamonds. She lives with her husband, a writer and TV producer, daughter, and son in New York City. For more information visit: http://www.djalirancher.com/about
The other night, I finally found the time to satisfy the closeted nerd in me and watch a series billed as a history of the men who built America on one of my favorite networks. Like most storylines told from the point of view of the victor, the series followed the lives of a few remarkably driven freedom-loving patriarchs who, as the story always goes, risked life and limb to reign supreme in the 19th century. Some of these men, like John D. Rockefeller for instance, had humble beginnings. Another, Andrew Carnegie, was an immigrant born in Scotland. And Henry Ford, the man who revolutionized how we get around town, was a diehard anti-Semite. Regardless of their backgrounds, an overwhelming majority of these well documented men whose life stories I’ve watched on TV and learned about in school, have something else in common: they are white. And those that emigrate from countries across Europe become white and seamlessly American without the same kind of acrimonious haterade many so-called immigrants from Mexico and other Latin-American countries face today. The fact that Mexicans were here before Europeans isn’t even an afterthought.

As I watched the series, I began to doze off at the recurrent stories that started blending into each other like one seamless narrative about realizing the American Dream. Instead, my life so far started flashing before me: sitting through history class at the subpar parochial and public New York City schools I attended in the late 1980s and through the dawn of the ‘90s. I thought about the capitalists and slavers who came to the Caribbean, Central and South America dressed in the guise of God-loving missionaries: about how seeing these images have impacted the way in which Black and Latino-American kids see themselves; and I thought about this Dominican dude who went by the name Jan Rodrigues—also known as Juan Rodriguez—that doesn’t get the props he truly deserves as a founder of post-Indigenous, modern-day New York City.

Mostly, however, I thought about my own journey reconciling my hyphenated identity in my book Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina. I fiercely love New York City and I totally dig my Dominican ancestry, but criticizing either side shouldn’t make me less authentically one or the other. I don’t buy into the ideal of the American Dream as it relates to communities of color here—total assimilation or bust!—just like I don’t believe that we live in a society where race doesn’t matter anymore. It isn’t a radical notion to question our society’s norms like the men who are credited for being the founders of this country did. If they were crammed into the same checkboxes that we are today, they might not have had the freedom to spread their creative wings and soar. I wonder if they would have been systematically taught that the parts of themselves that were not characteristically European were “primitive,” “pagan,” and a slew of other negative code words for nonwhite and non-Christian, if they would have been armed with one of the most important ingredients of a life without borders: a healthy self-esteem.

These are a few of the topics I explore in my book, a format-breaker that is part memoir and part chronicle of my year-long genetic adventure unearthing where my ancestors came from before I became Latina, using, in part the popular tool of ancestral DNA testing. I initially intended to write a book that leaned more heavily on reportage than using my own life as a microcosm to explore the broader strokes of living while Latina in America. It took me a minute to realize that it wasn’t working. Then I realized that there simply aren’t enough memoirs written by American born Latinos—certainly not of Dominican ancestry—in the complex and rich quilt of American literature.

Arriving at a place of truth and reconciliation with my hyphenated identity and, somewhere along the road, my father, was more of a challenge than I originally anticipated. I was ready. The wonderful thing about life is the winding road it takes you down once you trust the universe enough to guide you. I’m certain that my readers, Latino and American alike, will agree and see themselves in my own story.
Past "About the Author"

Vol. 16, No.6
November 2010

Vol. 16, No.5
September 2010

Vol. 16, No.3
May 2010

Vol. 16, No.2
March 2010

Vol. 16, No.1
January 2010

Vol. 15, No.6
November 2009

 1   2   3   4  5  
 
LATINA Style Inc.
About Us
Advertise with Us
Subscribe
Calendar of Events
News
Intern at LATINA Style
Blog
Contact Us

 

LATINA Style Magazine
Subscribe to the magazine
Advertise with Us
Blog
Current Issue
Business Series
About the Business Series
Register Online
Sponsorship Opportunities
Business Series Schedule
Press Releases
Volunteers

LATINA Style 50
About LS50
LS50 Special Report
LS50 Survey
LS50 conference
LS50 Columns
LS50 Companies of the year

National Latina Symposium
About the NLS
Register Online
Partner Organizations
Past Event Coverage
Press Releases
Sponsors
Event Information
Agenda
Hotel Reservation
Volunteers
Contact Us
LATINA Style Magazine
106 B East Broad Street | Falls Church| VA | 22046
2102 Empire Central | Dallas |TX | 75235
Ph: 703-531-1424

info@latinastyle.com  
Follow us on:
 
© 2013 LATINA Style Magazine - Legal Notices - Privacy Policy VICOM STUDIO - Web & Design Studio