Being Hispanic means a lot of things to many people, but it also comes with unspoken guidelines on how you should behave and think. I always find myself in frustrating situations with the people in my life for not satisfying their idea of a Hispanic-American.

I've often been the butt of the joke when my friends mock me for being "So Spanish" whenever I mispronounce a particular word or go into a cleaning frenzy. When I was growing up, I never thought my way to life would become a running gag with the people closest to me. Americans find other cultures so bizarre that their only way to cope with the differences between the new and what they have always known is by insulting the unknown. I spent most of my life half-heartedly laughing at the lousy jokes, holding my tongue because I was afraid that I would somehow come off as rude for defending myself and end up losing my friends. I now realize that the only way to end the assumption of how a Hispanic-Americans should conduct themselves is by speaking up and reminding people that I am much more than just my heritage.

More disheartening, is when your own family members laugh at you for assimilating excessively to American culture. Sometimes when I'm speaking to my relatives, I'll forget the word that I would like to use and instead use the English translation- my relatives like to use this opportunity to emphasize how much of a "gringa" I am. The end result? A confused person whose identity is defined by others perception of who they should be, instead of who they truly are. We are expected to behave like the stereotypes that negatively portray us and then are criticized for stepping out of the confinement of finite possibilities.

For years I struggled to walk the fragile line between being overly Hispanic and overly American hoping that it would please the people in my life. I was shamed for being me, and the growing voices in the Hispanic community that refused to be placed in a stereotypical box have led me to accept my multi-cultural upbringing that has immensely influenced the person that I am becoming. There is no one-way to represent a culture; you don't have to speak Spanish, dance salsa or know have traveled abroad to be Hispanic, and you don't have to speak English perfectly, understand football or like country music to be an American.

In 2017, you would think that people from different places in the world would be celebrated, but in the past few months, this country has only seen situations with derogatory attacks have surged, especially for the people who look and speak, unlike others. The collapse of this shaming and the projection of who a person should be, will only lead to more confident young people from various backgrounds and people who accept and praise the things that have always separated them from others.