Why write this?
I’ve rewritten this essay at least twice now. It’s been months since I wrote the first draft and as I finish this final draft, we’re nearly halfway through Hispanic History Month. I didn’t mean to begin this project on the holiday. I wanted to start it much earlier this year but after getting vaccinated — and as the pandemic appeared to abate this summer and now once again seems perpetual — other interests took precedence and summer days were left with less time to write and more time to spend with people I’d missed seeing in person.
Yet as this summer drew to a close, and I got back in a space that is my own with time in the evenings to myself, I was once again drawn to this project that has been in my mind throughout the pandemic.
I didn’t want to write for the sake of writing. Writing has always been work. I’ve only found joy in it when I felt prepared and didn’t have the restraints that came with doing it as a profession. But I spent the first months of the pandemic aimlessly jumping from interest to interest, book to book, looking for something that would captivate me and help the time pass. I wrote about my one never-ending fascination, the internet, for a bit and loved it. But I dropped that pursuit when I began to think about the experiences that define me and became curious about the meaning and history of my Latinx and immigrant identities. I again went from book to book, article to article, looking for more information, but this time focusing exclusively on these topics.
And in that search for answers to questions yet fully formed, I found what I needed to write about. And I say need because if I don’t write this process out, I don’t think I’ll be able to fully form the ideas I’m trying to develop.
It’s difficult to write about an experience that I can only claim a fraction of. Latinx encompasses such a wide group of people that any one Latinx writing about their experience is bound to miss so much.
This project is not an attempt to capture the entirety of the Latinx identity from a personal point of view. Hopefully, It will instead delve into the many parts of the Latinx identity while talking personally about the aspects that I have experienced.
I named this project “Latinx Notes” because of the journals I kept throughout my reading where I would jot down notes and ideas that I wanted to remember or further explore. I made lists of countless topics I plan to further study and I gained a growing shelf of books that I’ll continue to try to get through.
This project is an extension of that study. Its immediate purpose is to organize my thoughts and delve deeper into the many questions I still have and the many more I know will come up. I also hope it serves to show, even if just to myself, the particular place that Latinxs play in our world, especially in the U.S.
Latinxs hold a particular place in the American racial binary, which has always had white people at the top and Black people at the bottom. Latinxs have a fluid and malleable place in this hierarchy, and often times we have acted as a buffer between these two groups, to the benefit of whites.
Now more than ever, some Latinxs find themselves in the position that other racial minorities throughout U.S. history have once been in. Many Latinxs have the opportunity to abandon their solidarity with other people of color to join the top of the hierarchy, effectively validating and maintaining the social structure.
But they also have a unique opportunity, as one of the groups without a solidified place within this racial hierarchy, to help eradicate the entire hierarchy and create a society that truly rejects racist power structures.
That sort of systemic shift, however, will not be possible if people give in to white supremacy or turn a blind eye to what is happening in America. We are at a crossroads, but the people of color in America have always been at a crossroads because our livelihoods have never been secure.
So the second, more lofty reason for this project is to live up to the belief that Latinx voices need to be a part of the American dialogue if we are truly committed to ending this nation’s racial hierarchy. No one person or writing project will accomplish that single-handedly, but it always helps to have more people chipping away at it.