Reminders
Words by Angela Acosta
Art by Jennifer Gonzalez
Childhood signs in Spanish I can’t understand, the memory of trying to read highway signs with all my might, but even English writing didn’t have a hold on me then. I sometimes must remind myself of my culture, floating castles in the sky my ancestors must be inhabiting.
The ancestors who saw the bloodshed of the Mexican Revolution, the ones who fought for our education, the ones whose stories are lost to the vast sea of records deemed insignificant.
Ricky Martín albums were the sounds of my nascent Spanish, adolescent tongue dutifully rolling my R’s como los rieles del Ferrocarril. Every Spanish class assumed I was a heritage speaker, fluently versed in a vocabulary that spilled out words beyond my comprehension.
Applying to college reminded me of all the things my parents taught me, and all the traditions they simply couldn’t.
I started calling myself a Chicana Unicorn, after people did me the disservice of calling me a rara avis, an unexpected Mexican American growing up in Florida, studying in the Northeast, at Esmíth College, like we started printing shirts for our Nostor@s club.
Geography lessons kept me guessing about what Ciudad Juárez and San Luis Potosí look like, sound like, how my ancestors inhabited spaces in the Southwest I’ve crossed many times on airplanes taking me to the land where all branches of my family tree converged. Even in Spain, my heart skips a beat in the bright sun freckling the Earth with olive trees and vineyards.
Now I stick Spanish praises to student papers, doubting at times my editing capabilities for a language preserved only in my name. I am guilty of dangling modifiers, too.
Remember the other paths too, through Europe, through las Américas, the small generational fibers pulling on collective anxieties and misfortunes. They hold you up too, many ethnicities strong.
Artist Jennifer Gonzalez