Too white to be Latina, too Latina to be white

Whenever I tell people English isn’t my first language, they’re usually surprised. Honestly, I understand it. 

When I was in high school, I decided I wanted to live in Canada and be a journalist. My problem was most Canadian journalists sounded nothing like me. So, like other kids desperate to live the “Canadian dream,” I spent hours on YouTube teaching myself how to have a “neutral” accent. 

I was terrified people would make assumptions about me because of the way I talked. I wanted to be normal, and I wanted to fit in. I stopped using my full name, not only because Canadians are confused by a person with multiple last names, but also because Loureiro sounds foreign. 

I surrounded myself with North American culture because, as much as I hate to admit it, I was embarrassed about my own. I’m proud to be Brazilian, but I spent my whole life hearing that the only way to be truly successful was to leave Brazil and move to a first-world country.

While I did grow up enjoying Brazilian media — I spent hours watching novelas and waiting to see who was going to be the next contestant eliminated from Big Brother Brasil — I mostly consumed American media. 

The protagonists had lives I could only dream of. Not because they could do magic or were secretly a pop star, but because they went to school where the main sport was football and not soccer. 

Nelson Rodrigues, a Brazilian writer and journalist, created the term “mongrel complex” to explain how many Brazilians feel inferior compared to other countries and cultures. 

For most of my life, while I was taught to be proud of having such a rich culture, I was also taught that being Brazilian was something to be ashamed of. 

That shame was everywhere I looked. The few examples of Latin American characters I had would often be poor, uneducated and treated like a joke. These characters very rarely spoke Portuguese, and made me feel like to be a real Latina I had to speak Spanish and look like a model. 

When people ask me if I consider myself a person of colour, I have trouble answering them. When you’re in a place where most people are Latin American, and you look like me, you’re white. 

But since moving to Canada, I’ve had to take on this whole new identity of “being Latina” that I never had to consider before. 

For the past four years, I’ve had to deal with people telling me I’m exotic, incorrectly pronouncing my last name and feeling deep shame when my accent accidentally slips out.

I’m constantly questioning my capability as a journalist in Canada when I still mix up my prepositions or struggle to pronounce some words. 

When my sister came to visit me a few years ago, we went to a drugstore and we were speaking Portuguese to each other. While we were browsing through the makeup section, I noticed a security guard following us. He kept watching us the entire time like we were going to steal something. 

I felt completely powerless. I hated the fact that I was seen as a criminal just because I was speaking a foreign language. I haven’t spoken Portuguese in public since. 

I knew that when I moved to Canada it was inevitable that I was going to experience xenophobia, but I couldn’t have prepared myself for how much it would hurt when classmates asked me if I spoke Mexican or lived in the jungle. 

Yet I don’t feel like I belong in racialized spaces. If I describe myself as a person of colour, I’m told I’m white. But if I describe myself as white, I’m told I’m Latina. 

I’m so proud of being Latina, and I want to be more open about my heritage, but it’s a lot more difficult than I expected. 

I don’t want to be condensed into a cheap stereotype. I want people to see me for who I am before they see me as a tokenistic version of my ethnicity. 

For the past couple of months, I’ve been attending events by the Brazilian community in Halifax. It’s somewhat difficult, though, as a 20-year-old, to connect with people who are much older than me and live completely different lives.

I’m at a point in my life where I don’t feel Brazilian or Canadian. I’m in a state of limbo. While I have all of these experiences from my childhood that my Canadian friends will never truly understand, I’m also living my life in Canada, encountering things that my family and friends back home will never experience.

But I don’t think I need to decide what I am. I can be Latina even if I don’t look like it, and I can also be Canadian even if my English is not always perfect.