I'm Puerto Rican and Haitian, but I can't speak Spanish or Creole
I could honestly end this here.
I can't speak Spanish or Creole, I don't, I feel like this is the assimilation I didn't even know I would go through, I was thrown into it, my mom was trilingual and only taught me one language, Dad never really got around to teaching me, my own language was taught to me by white people, my history was taught to me by white people.
I just don't fit.
I don't speak Spanish, I don't know Spanish music, I can't dance bachata or salsa, sometimes my pronunciation of Spanish words sounds just like the white girl in my high school class who was only taking it for a graduation requirement, where's my Nuyorican accent? Oh right, I don't have one.
I don't fit.
All I know is “sak pase” and I learned that phrase on the screen of a JetBlue monitor, I’m so disconnected, I rep it so hard, I love my mix of cultures but sometimes it doesn't feel deeper than the two flags hanging in my room, I haven't had Haitian food in the same amount of years that I haven't seen my mom, I'm not black enough, not Latina enough, years ago my cousin told me I wasn't Haitian, I don't understand what my grandparents are saying, I'm not Afro-Latina but I'm Latina and black, my Puerto Rican side isn't that dark so I don't even adopt that label because I have no idea what I am, who I am, who am I?
I'm worried I won't be able to pass this onto my kids, my future children, I want them to have my skin tone and my thick hair and dark eyes, but I'm worried that'll be it, that their tongue will only know one language like mine, that their brains will only know one history, and it won’t be our ancestors, but rather, our colonizers.
Where do I fit? I don’t know.





















