October 15, 2015 Intermediate English
Prof. Aponte Ingl. 3103-102
It’s Hard Enough Being Me The essay, “It’s hard enough being me”, by Anna Lisa Raya is about her experience when she went off to New York for college and she had to label herself as “Latina”. Anna Lisa explains that her dad was a second-generation Mexican, born and raised in Los Angeles, and her mom was born in Puerto Rico and raised in California. Raya herself was born and raised in Los Angeles in a Mexican neighborhood where she defined herself as Mexican. Only when she was with her grandmother and aunt from her mother’s side, she defined herself as Puerto Rican. When she went off to college, she had to answer what race she was and she had to pick “Latina”. She explains that it was the first time she had to think of that and put a label. She was confused because she did not have the physical aspects of a Latina, she did not know Mexico’s history or Puerto Rico’s, nor she knew how to speak Spanish. She felt like she did not have the “requirements” to be labeled as Latina but she couldn’t be labeled as an American because then she would be a “spic” (to Americans) or a “sell-out” (to Latinos). That thought bothered her until someone advised her that she had to be true to herself and not worry about what others think, and that she had to satisfy herself and not others. Raya finishes her essay by stating “Soy yo and no one else. Punto”; I am myself and no one else. That advice made her realize that people are always going to have an opinion about what others do, say or feel. We just have to be ourselves and worry less about what others think of us. We are what we choose to be and we cannot rely on others to make that decision. A lot of people with multicultural backgrounds have the same problem as Anna Lissa. There is a book called, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time