Depending on who I am talking to, I may identify as Mexican-American, Latina, Chicana, or Tejana. Ask someone who identifies as a Latinx or Mexican-American what the term means and you can get a million different answers. Where they come from, their education, their economic status, and the number of generations in their family that have lived in the United States, all play a contributing role in how an individual sees their culture reflected in this country.

Even identifying as a Tejana (a Mexican-American inhabitant of South Texas) means something different to me than it may for someone that grew up in the same town as me. On my mother’s side, my family goes back generations in this country, I am a first-generation college student, and I was raised in a lower middle class home in a town by the Mexican/American border. My upbringing has affected the way I see my culture, my background, and the meaning of the term “Mexican-American.” I don’t think the word is something that can clearly be defined to describe the lifestyle of an entire group of people. After all, the term itself needs a hyphen to combine two different cultures into one identity. But the term is still powerful, used to unite various generations that have struggled to have their name respected, that to this day, battle stigmas and prejudice in this country.

For me, being Latina is taking pride in my last name, my culture, and the family I was born into. Being Mexican-American is eating Turkey on Thanksgiving and Tamales on Christmas. Being Chicana is realizing where my culture stands in the eyes of other Americans and acknowledging the injustices placed upon those of my background. Ser Tejana significa a empezar una frase en español and end it in English.

I want this country to eventually reach a point where my ethnicity holds as much relevance as my name. Yes, it’s important for you to know and acknowledge, because it is a part of me and my story, but it does not reveal all. Just like my name, my ethnicity was not something I chose at birth, it was given to me. My ethnicity has nicknames, there are stigmas attached to the word, there are countless commentaries on Urban Dictionary that attempt to define my entire existence based on one word. Based on my first name, based on my last name, based on the box I check off on the census. But each word is only the title of a bigger story that is still being formed.

While I applaud those that take the time to flip through the pages of a story, I also encourage everyone to never forget to read the title. The title is where it all began, it encompasses an important fragment of the story, and it was there before we had the opportunity to read the story we came to know and love.