I wrote this essay in 2008; it’s still relevant today. I call it, “I Used to Only Be Dominican.”
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That’s me in the yellow bell-bottoms + my cousins + my Tio Julio
As a first-generation Dominican-American, I can recall many encounters with non-Latinos that really set off “light bulbs” in my head. However, one in particular still resonates with me today.
Before I started kindergarten, my world consisted only of my family. We didn’t play outside and there was no such thing as pre-school; we stayed with Grandma until the New York City Department of Education said it was time we went to school. Naturally, this meant I did not speak English and everything I knew was 100% attached to who my grandparents, parents and aunts and uncles were. My only connection with the “American” world was the time I spent people watching from the window of our third floor walk-up.
Even the television shows we watched were in Spanish. I was American-born for sure, but was kept within the walls of Grandma’s railroad apartment in Brooklyn. I was Dominican and nothing else.
Fast forward to my predominately African-American kindergarten classroom in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn; I’m surrounded by children and adults who kind of look like me but don’t speak like me. Of course, kids being kids, even though I was the odd man out, I made friends right away.
One day, as I was playing “house” in the classroom kitchen with my new best friend Yolanda, she started cooking things that were foreign to me: collard greens, okra, catfish. I looked at her as if she were an alien.
“No, we’re cooking bistec with rice and beans and tostones and salad.” She quickly looked at me as if I were the alien.
“What’s that?” she asked me.
Huh? I remember thinking to myself. Is this girl crazy?
That was my first realization that not everyone ran their homes the way we ran our home.
Yolanda did not go home to find a tall glass of FrescAvena waiting for her. More than likely is was just juice or plain old milk.
Nor did she rush through her homework so that she could watch “Las Amazonas” on Channel 41. Perhaps she was busy watching any number of TV sitcoms that were popular at the time.
And I’m almost sure her Papi didn’t show up with stalks of sugar cane on Fridays as a pre-weekend treat. Maybe she got candy or chips or take-out.
All of this made me look at the people outside my window differently. Every time someone walked by, I wondered what shows they watched, if they lived for beisbol like we did. Did their Grandma add beets to the potato salad, and float pieces of real fruit in the fruit punch? Did they eat spaghetti with rice? Mangu with fried cheese? Sancocho?
It awakened a curiosity in me that led to a love of writing and literature and the life of a pseudo-journalist: I’ve always wanted to know about everything that was happening outside of my four walls, outside my window. I wanted the passersby to stop and tell me their stories. I wanted to eat catfish and okra* and watch American shows and know what everybody was talking about when they spoke of what happened on TV the night before.
I wanted to know what it was about rap music that captivated my uncle more than merengue and salsa, while it repulsed my great-grandmother to no end. Why didn’t all the other little girls wear rolos and sit under the dryer for two hours every Sunday like I did? And how did they get their braids stuck to their scalps like that?!?!
Needless to say, I immersed myself in this “new world” I discovered (much like that Euro-trash Columbus before me). My classroom was like a living breathing anthropological study I was thrown into, and it wasn’t long before my English was perfected and accent-less, I was more engrossed in “The Facts of Life” than I was in Channel 41, and my music collection began to include Prince and Michael Jackson instead of Fernandito and Celia Cruz.
Not to say that these were thrown by the wayside- it is impossible to grow up in my family and completely distance yourself from the Dominican-ness of it all, but, as a result of that very first conversation with Yolanda, I slowly became Dominican-American, as opposed to just Dominican.
And sometimes I wonder what Yolanda eats for dinner now, if she ever tried the tostones and bistec and the rice and beans…
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*Funny side note: Today, I absolutely hate catfish, and okra makes me want to barf. Maybe I’m just Dominican after all? HA!
xoxo,
Raquel Ivelisse