My entire life I’ve felt trapped outside my own DNA, barricaded from my own identity, and lost within my own genetic markers whose caps never seemed to match mine. I am Latina, but I’ve found myself stuck between the space of who I am, as a Salvadorian-American, who doesn’t speak her native tongue.
For as long as I could remember, the phrase “no sabo” had been written across my head in sharpie, permanent and unremovable. In Hispanic culture a “no sabo” is defined as a person who cannot speak Spanish well, or at all, despite them being of Hispanic heritage. For most of my family it was a humorous joke—an icebreaker for the silence at family events. Though for me, it was the epitome of shame and humiliation that only reminded me of the disconnection I felt from my own identity. For a while I found myself lost between the person who I was and the person who I should be, wondering if I deserved to savor the taste of my own culture.
My inability to speak Spanish followed me like a ghost, lingering around my soul and my heart; it was a curse held under a permanent spell. For a while that’s all I saw it as, a curse: a reason to blame my parents; a reason to blame myself. That is until I discovered a part of myself I had not unlocked before—a part of me that was fresh, enriching, and free. When I entered high school, I began to investigate my persistent insecurity. So I endeavored in my sorrow in the only way I knew how: listening to music. Though this time, I decided to listen to a new genre: reggaeton. In the past I had always heard Spanish music played around my house, but this time it was different. I chose to play it.
Over time I began to surround myself with Spanish music ranging from bachata to reggaeton and salsa. I started to study the lyrics, not just by listening to them, but immersing myself in them, feeling the power behind them. Soon enough through my music exploration, my vocabulary began to expand. Momentarily, I felt free, until many laughed at my attempts to sing and mocked the lyrics of my Hispanic heritage. “She really thinks she can escape being a no sabo now because she knows one song, what a joke,” was something that I recalled overhearing. These words burned through my skin and down to my heart, tore my lungs to strings, and held a suffocating grip on my soul. My supporters—those who I was supposed to unite with and relate to—my greatest advocates, were only dragging me down.
“If my own community won’t accept me, why should I keep trying?”
Those twelve words held a grip over me that was almost inevitably impossible to break. This dysphoria dragged me down for the majority of my life, keeping me hostage. Although the answer may not be simple, this phrase that lingered through my head brought me empowerment in ways I’d never expect. It brought me new perspectives. The longer this pondered on my mind the more I realized my loss in translation was never a missing DNA cap, it was only the path to my identity, a map to endeavor myself within my culture.
But culture is not about perfection; it is about connections, values, and love.
So, the next time I listened to a bachata song, I thought not of the brokenness within the lyrics I sang, but the intimacy I felt with Latin American music.
Loving my culture truly felt beautiful.
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