You Are Not Mexican -- A Memoir Excerpt
Seats Are Still Available for Writing With Your Ancestors in Partnership With Narratively
For Dondi.
You learn who you are in Mexico by knowing who you are not.
“Where you from?” the cab driver asks.
You slide into the backseat of his pine-fresh taxi. He turns down the volume on the talk radio program. The cab driver’s question seems like a throwaway comment to inhabit the emptiness between strangers. After a few months of living in Mexico, you now understand that when a cab driver asks, “Where are you from?” it is the opening gambit of a negotiation.
Your answer is important. If you mention any place in the United States, Europe, or Canada, you’ve pegged yourself as a tourist. He will charge you 20 to 50 percent more than a Mexican for the same trip.
“Akumal,” you say.
“No,” the cab driver insists, “where are you really from?”
He knows most people born in Akumal work in the travel and tourism industry. People born in Akumal earn their living by pretending to be cheerful when North American tourists ask whether the restaurant has gluten-free tamales. They don’t take gleaming white cabs in the middle of the day where you’ll be paying stupid money for soggy linguine and lobster while a Mariachi band half-heartedly plays “La Bamba” too close to your ear.
You don’t want to sketch the geography of your life in watercolors of hesitant Spanish. You are running away from yourself. But you don’t know that yet. Instead, you say, “North Carolina.”
The cab driver nods, smiles, and switches the radio station to one playing Taylor Swift as a nod to your Americanness. You ask him to switch back to the talk radio program.
“I may be a gringa,” you think. “But at least I’ll be an informed one.”
And yet, you are dumb as hell.
A year later, it will hit you that the identity you sought to shed amidst coconut palms and turquoise waters will cling to you like sargassum. You defined your existence in the United States as a descendant of enslaved people. But in Mexico, you are a colonizer. In the eyes of many Mexicans, including the cab driver, you are no different than every Brad and Becky who unloads their vices on Mexico and returns home to complain about the “illegals.”
The cab driver shrugs. The traffic light changes three times, but you’re no closer to turning on the highway. His wife calls and asks when his shift will end. Her voice is pliant yet firm. She frames her command as a question. The cab driver hangs up.
***
“You are not Mexican,” the entire country seems to shout.
Your Americanness bridles at the notion that you can’t squat in Mexico long enough for her to accept you. In the United States, you can achieve the shallowest sense of belonging by consistently performing superficial displays of conformity. You are American if you pepper your conversation with pop culture references. You are American if you drink beer. If you drink craft beer, you are a different sort of an American.
Mexico requires blood sacrifice, precision, and desire. Imitation is no substitute. But who are you to argue? You are not Mexican.
Your opinions about Mexican culture, food, life, and politics don’t count. Mexicans tell you this with tight, polite smiles. For example, you are not allowed to suggest a preference for green pozole over red. You cannot defend your choice by saying the cilantro and epazote (a kind of tea leaf) combined with a dash of jalap and jalapeño are a better contrast to the thick wooliness of the hominy in green pozole than the ancho, guajillo, of the red broth.
You must ignore the obvious terror rising in your voice when a friend screams, “Viva Mexico!” before making a sharp U-turn in the middle of traffic on a narrow, dirt road.
You are a thing of curiosity, exoticism, and maybe brief interest. But you are American. It says so on your passport, the way you dress, and the slight southern twang that drifts on your vowels. It’s not just Mexico; you are hyperaware of your Americaness while visiting other countries, too.
You first discovered your triple-consciousness 25 years ago while on a journalism assignment to South Africa. You desperately wanted to belong to the tribe of stoic women with burnished brown skin and glorious voices that rose together like tributaries of a river. But whenever you attempted the nuanced “clicks” of the Xhosa language, you sounded like a hummingbird.
You swore the women looked at you in pity, clicking, “Poor thing. She has lost her ancestral voice.” You are lovely and shiny but American, nonetheless.
***
Seats are still available for the Writing With Your Ancestors: Infusing Memoir With Family History class in partnership with
.The five-week class starts on Monday, September 23rd at 7 p.m. EDT.
I refined the course over the past five years to help writers and other creatives connect with their ancestors and transform their family history notes and memories into publishable essays and memoirs.
We discuss somatic and spiritual ways to connect with your ancestors, narrative structure, the ethics of memoir, and cultivating your unique voice.
A limited number of discounts are available.
Click here to sign up.