I’m proud for who and what I am.
For my roots and ancestry.
For my culture, food, clothes, animals, dances, flag, everything.
White. Black. Brown. Tan. Etc.
Peruana; daughter of the great Incan Kings and Queens and neglected daughter of the disciples
of manifest destiny.
I’m the product of immigrant parents who are stuck living in a broken abode whose “profound”
history is the color of eggshell white; proudly white-washed, unashamed prejudice.
I’m the first generation child who suffers from immense back pain from carrying my family
and our customs
But I also hold America’s burning hands
Because I am both.
I’m an identity crisis in a small body
Arguing what’s fair and what’s unfair
What’s racist and what’s not
Whose left and whose right
Who protects me and who destroys me
I can’t look straight at my founding fathers for I have my Incan mothers holding my heart and
veins.
I can’t agree with the evil SPEAK ENGLISH YOU ARE IN AMERICA melody because I speak
two languages and can understand a third one when I want to.
My heart burns for the passion and hard work of undocumented immigrants today, and hurts for
when others sneer at my compassion.
I have the tendency to protect my brown father at all costs when walking into a measly
supermarket and glare back at wondering hungry vultures.
I protect my family;
However I protect myself from within my own family as well.
My roots are dominated by the patriarchy that Latin America still drowns in today.
So while I’m protecting I’m also defending myself.
I don’t know why I haven’t fallen yet. I take it as a good sign. I have many years of fight left in
me. For the battles that come within myself and outside will never stop.
But that doesn’t mean that I won’t give up.
I’ve been through so much that I can’t afford to stop.
All stereotypes will rot away from me. All statistics will end with me and drop off the charts.
I am American, in both directions of South and North, I am a woman, I have the ovaries to tear
and shed these walls down over and over again.
No matter what “wall” will go up this year or the next,
I will win and raise my gold belt to the skies to show my ancestors that I, a small speck, of
woman in a man ruled world, have won against it all.
Until then I shall wrap my fists up with tape, put on my gloves and defend this dysfunctional
identity of mine until the day I stop breathing.
You’ll see.
My name is not Julitza Pia Penelope Zapata Gomez for nothing.