By Koy Flores
My name is Koy Flores. I may not look like it to some people, but I am Latino. I have a white mother, and a Hispanic father. Many people call it Mexican-American, but it sounds like a strange, unnecessary label to me. I think they created it in an effort to maintain one’s nationality as American, while also respecting their family background. Except, I remember my dad questioning it one time, he didn’t understand why some Americans have found it necessary to differentiate other non-white communities in this way. It’s almost like they’re trying to appear to be better with this categorization.
“Why can’t they just be called Americans?” My dad asked me once.
The thing with me, is that I don’t have the caramel complexion, nor do I have dark and strong facial features that are characteristic of Latinos. I don’t speak Spanish, except for what I’ve picked up from school classes. I don’t eat meatloaf, I’d rather eat an empanada. I don’t know how to dance to Hispanic music at parties, but I’m always singing 2000’s rock songs in my car with the windows down.
I have allowed myself to Americanize to the point where I don’t ask my abuelita (my little grandma) if she can yell at me to translate household appliances from English to Spanish anymore. I don’t go to many parties on either side but if I do go, I feel out of place. It’s a feeling that doesn’t exactly instill any pride in my culture.
I remember being a kid, and having pride in being Latino. In middle school I had what was the best friend group I’ve ever had. I don’t keep in touch with them anymore. Now looking back, one of the coolest things about the group was the variety of races we represented. Some of us were Latino, others were Asian, Filipino, or white. I didn’t really notice it then because we were so young, but now that I’m older, I realize how pure and rare that was. Because you don’t really see that these days. Most kids think with the mindset of, “I can only be friends with people who look like me.”
Back then, I actually stuck around my friends a lot. I was particularly close with a pair of twins, Mexican boys. The three of us along with a Vietnamese boy were the pioneers of library nerds who would read in secret during lunch time. After a while I was the only one who wanted to read, so we became the pioneers of playing awful computer games. Coolmathgames.com was all the rage back then. It was a free pass to goof off in the computer lab.
The one premier thing that we all did as a group was play soccer, or futbol, which is what my father had insisted on me calling it. I’ve since learned that “futbol” is what it’s known as everywhere outside of the United States. So much so, that in other Spanish speaking parts of the world, people would refer to what The United States calls football as “futbol americano.” Back then, we were a band of nerds who swore that we would kick our tickets into the pro soccer scene! I was never particularly good at soccer, but hey, I had the lungs to run for a long time at least.
For me, joining the soccer team meant two things: I got to spend more time with my friends, and I was able to embrace my Hispanic culture by playing. Soccer, to my knowledge, is the most pervasive sport around the globe. This is especially true in Europe, Africa, and Central and South America. I can’t speak on behalf of all Latino kids, but in my childhood, whenever we went to parties with other Hispanics, there was always a soccer ball sitting outside in the yard.
Us kids would kick the ball around, “passing it to each other.” The most exciting part of the game, though, was that we had no idea where the ball was going to end up. It was fun, relaxing even, and gave me a sense of pride in my culture. My father played soccer growing up too, and dreamed of playing professionally at one point, his ambition was more genuine than the whistle-in the wind proclamation I made with my friends though. That didn’t stop my father from coaching me on techniques and strategies of playing the game though, all the while chastising my “idiotic” middle school coach.
I played soccer for two years, before dropping the sport in favor of wrestling, which I had also been doing since the sixth grade.
In the eighth grade, I made another conscious decision to learn more about my culture. Granted, 99% of us have probably had to take a Spanish class at some point, but that number drops off a little bit when I tell you that I’ve taken a Spanish class in eighth grade, all the way up to my high school graduation, even into college. I was always fascinated by the language, and I felt more connected with my culture the more I learned.
I understand that to a degree, high school Spanish isn’t the same as Latino Spanish. I realize that there are entirely different words and rules between the two of them.
Despite that, I still relish in learning what I have at my disposal. I’ve always done exceptionally well in the class too, and spent my time studying it from both the book and the internet. I’m taking my third collegiate Spanish class at the time of writing this, where the our professor delivers our lectures in almost entirely Spanish. She even makes us ask questions in Spanish, which can be painful to both perform and watch sometimes. Truth be told though, I actually welcome the challenge, as I feel like it pushes me into a healthy grind to get better.
One day I want to talk to my abuelita in Spanish again, hopefully about more than just household appliances. After all, immersion is probably the most effective way to naturally adapt to speaking it. I want to try speaking it in front of other people too, but I’m still trying to get over the fear of being laughed at.
Despite my reservations, I do try speaking the language with strangers, an opportunity that I’ve often had, having grown up in an area with many Hispanic people.
One of those times involved me taking an early trip to my local supermercado, right as it was opening for the day. There was a line that was building up outside the entrance, and the owner was talking to his customers in front of it, making small talk with them. He hovered over me and asked me how my day was, in which I exchanged a few sentences with him in Spanish. He had greeted me in the language, so I took the opportunity to continue practicing it, instead of telling him, “No hablo español.”
Unfortunately, at one point he asked me something that I didn’t understand. I’m not sure if it was due to me not knowing the words he used, or if he was speaking too fast. I knew that I had taken a loss when he apologized to me in English,
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you didn’t speak Spanish.”
I kind of laughed at his comment and murmured out something like,
“Solamente sé un poco de Español.”
There have been a few other times where I have spoken a few sentences to strangers in Spanish, but all of those times either went smoothly, or ended in a way that wasn’t quite as abrupt or embarrassing as my supermercado experience was.
My father never taught me how to speak Spanish, I asked him once why he never tried. “I just never had the patience to, ” he responded.
That was the most I ever heard him say on the topic. I’ve also heard him telling other people the same reason as well, which legitimizes it. I can’t be certain about this, but I have my theory on another reason why he never tried teaching his kids.
My dad moved to Texas from Mexico when he was very young, and he was able to learn both languages simultaneously by himself. I think he expects the same thing for his kids, which to a point, I can see where he’s coming from. My dad has always had the Do-It-Yourself mentality, a trait that I’ve tried to condition myself to, which brings me to my final topic.
The final thing about my culture that really stuck with me from my childhood was my father’s adamance on the Latino work ethic. As kids, my siblings and I would help my father with a lot of home projects. We didn’t really have a stable home until I became a freshman in high school. My parents used to fight a lot, and us kids would bounce to our grandparent’s houses while the fireworks ensued.
At my abuelita’s house, we spent about a week at a time fixing it up. There was a couple of weeks one summer where we had to smash down every wall in every room in the house to put in new insulation and drywall. It was an itchy and messy process, one which became characterized by my father’s encouragement to, “Work like a Mexican.”
It might sound silly, but to me, “Working like a Mexican” inspired me to work a little bit harder in every task that I do. It instills pride in me to this day, as I recognize my Hispanic community as being some of the hardest working people around. I also identify my community with the drive to persevere against adversity and for some, against minority limitations as well.
My father would push me to do more tasks to develop my ingenuity and work ethic. Painting, yard work, mechanical tasks, car tasks, cleaning, he would even coach me during wrestling season. Throughout all of this, I was establishing a mental resolve to “Work like a Mexican.”
It’s not always easy growing up as a man in the middle of two different races. At times it can feel very isolated and lonely. I can still say that I am proud of my background and I want to embrace it in any way that I can. But now that I’m older, I realize that staying grounded in “Who Koy is” is a more important question to take with me. I will also say that I am becoming a more rounded person because of my life and that feeling this way and having these experiences has only contributed to that. I am an American, I am Latino, but most importantly I am Koy Javier Flores.
