Querida Prima

This is a letter from a second-generation Mexican-American young woman in 1935 to her cousin in Mexico.

Querida prima,

¡Te extraño mucho! Sometimes I think about what it means that I am here and you are in México, and I wonder if that means we are still the same. You are my cousin- we share the same family, the same food, songs and dances, stories, language, histories. But sometimes I feel like me being here and being born here means I can’t really be like the rest of the family.

Whenever I visit you I am sure I am not Méxicana in the same way as everyone there. But I am surely not an American. Americans are white. There are black people here too, and I guess maybe they are Americans, but they are not Americans like white people are. And we don’t fit in with any of them. Since mi madre y padre don’t speak English well it’s hard for white people to really accept them, but sometimes it seems like they try. A lot of us Méxicanos live together, and it makes it feel like we’re not that different sometimes, like we might fit in here somehow.

Will you come soon? I know that “women rarely emigrated alone” when my parents came here, and that your mom and dad wouldn’t really like it, but I know you could be ok here with me (35). I think you’d like it- there’s a feeling that young people, like our age, are really changing things. We’re starting to spread our culture, all the things we love about México, to others, and it seems like people are responding really well to it. It could be a little bit like our own small México, but en Los Estados Unidos. Think about it, ok?

Te amo,

Ale

picture from: http://www.swccd.edu/~ssh/Disciplines/index.asp?D654