The Dull Pain of Occupying Multiple Spaces as a Woman
I am a woman with no home, an enemy to my birthplace and a trader to my homeland.
In the eyes of the owners of the spaces that I half occupy, I have never been white enough, and I have never been brown enough. As a Chicana, I have always felt this, but there are moments when it burns and glows red.This has lead me to question who I am at all. In these moments where I feel that I am everything and belong nowhere, it is essential to remember the words of Bell Hooks. She states, “…if you want to remain, you’ve got, in a sense, to remember yourself, always as a body in a system that has not become accustomed to your presence or your physicality.” That is, in order to remain in spaces such as universities or traditional homes as modern woman of color, it is essential to our well being to remember that these spaces were not made for us. Instead, we forced ourselves in. This revolution in the status of women has come with opportunity and gain but also confusion and ache. Often, we are so tightly knit into supportive communities that we do not realize that the spaces we occupy are conflicting. It is painful to remember that to be an educated woman of color living in modern society is to occupy opposing spaces.
I am never made more aware of the spaces that I occupy than when I am met with extremes of either side, either side being modern North American culture and traditional Mexican culture. An instance of the latter is when I visited my father’s hometown La Rumorosa, a small pueblo located in the mountains of Baja California, last summer. Towards the end of our trip, my father, cousin, and I went to visit two close friends of my father. They were both elder, traditional Mexican women; one of them was about fifty years old and the other about seventy years old. During our visit, the women showed great interest in my cousin’s college and career plans, asking them what they were majoring in and what they planned to do with their degree. During this conversation, I was not looked at. I was not expected to speak. I intentionally was not asked about my college or career plans because traditionally, I am not supposed to have any. My cousin was expected to have plans for his life because he is a man, and I was not because I am a woman. I took it to heart at first, not realizing this. I thought: do I not seem educated? After I concluded that I was ignored because of my gender I thought: I should have told them something; I should have explained to them that women are more than capable of being intelligent and educated. But, I was silent. I was forced to confront the point in which the spaces that I occupy deflect. This confrontation would have been easier to take on if I would have remembered that traditional Mexican culture was built around female submission and that although I hold my culture dear to my heart, it still hopes to see me docile. If the fundamentals of the spaces we occupy are forgotten, we are desperately left to attempt to prove the authenticity of who we are.
The sad truth is that although Latinas have the highest growing percentage rate of college graduations, to many we are seen as uneducated and incapable. As stated by Bell Hooks, we must remember that this is not because of who we are but rather because of the ideals that these spaces have traditionally housed. By not questioning our treatment within communities such as universities and our own cultures, we fuel the feeling that we are outsiders. This feeling of “outsiderness” is common among people of color living in the United States. Although being Chicana has its benefits as Ruben Navarrette refers to as having, “the best of both worlds” it often leaves us feeling as though we are, “rooted in neither.” To keep these feelings at bay, we must validate ourselves and rely on only ourselves to make us feel real.
