David Muñoz | How to be an American
My mother came to America when she was 17-years-old. By the time she had me, she'd been here for almost 10 years. I was her fourth child. Most children from immigrant households learn their family’s native language before English. True for me, I learned Spanish first, but quickly developed English as my primary language. Assimilating into this culture without asking why was easy. American schooling, cartoons, and my older siblings, who learned the American alphabet before Spanish grammar, spelling, or syntax, all helped.
As I grew older, I was made fun of for my Spanish at home because I couldn't roll my “R’s” and I mispronounced words. At school I was placed in an ESL class because I stuttered and had a Spanish sounding last name. They assumed I didn’t know English. An American kid wouldn't have been placed in ESL for stuttering. I would speak to my mother in English, she’d reply in Spanish and we’d try to understand each other. Not completely, but that’s how we learned each other's languages. I was too young then to care, but as I got older, the constant of not fitting in stayed with me. Soon I found myself asking, what does it mean to belong? Some say it’s your home—the physical home where you find comfort. Others say it’s where you’re needed. Both are true, but in my experience, it’s something else.
I lived in Newark, NJ for years. Oftentimes, my first interaction with people there hinged on the question, “Where are you from?” My face invites the question. Dissatisfied with “Omaha, NE” as a reply, one man FaceTimed his father in England, turned his phone to me, and said, “Look dad, a real Mexican immigrant!” It didn’t matter where I was born. He asked because he wanted to know where I belonged.
My Mexican identity is layered. Our history involves waves of Spaniards taking our lands and our languages. My grandfather was put in a school where he didn’t learn his mother’s native tongue. He was forced to practice a religion that wasn’t his. Colonization imposed a new set of cultural practices, different from those his people had practiced for centuries prior to European contact, which makes my American identity complicated. What is more American than that? I mean, honestly?
I asked my mother what she first thought when she arrived in Brownsville, TX. She replied, “ the American dream.” Only later would she recalculate the beginning of her experience here as “the American nightmare.” In Mexico, they speak about America as a place where you can have everything you want and more. You’ll own land, have nice clothes, have access to everything and anything you’ll need. When my mother arrived in the US, reality set in. She had no papers, didn’t know the language, and she was called “illegal.” She was stuck paying off the coyotes that brought her over the border. She was also at risk of being deported.
I’ve noticed in American culture, we don’t understand what it means to be deported. We’re easily satisfied by the idea that people are being sent back to their homelands. However, we don’t talk about what that process involves. My mother was deported after receiving a small promotion at Target, where she worked. She was really great at math. The managers valued this in her, and offered her a position doing inventory, even though she didn’t speak English. You don’t need English for math. An Immigration officer was waiting for her the next morning.
My father did a construction job on a house. Four days of cheap, under-the-table work. When he finished, rather than paying him, his employer called immigration instead. Growing up with these stories, you can’t help but think that your country doesn’t want you or your family. My parents now have their permanent residency, and are documented US citizens, but the road they traveled to get there was long, dimly-lit, and riddled with fear, paranoia, and disappointment.
I was born in the US but often wonder if that’s enough for other Americans. How do you understand belonging if your roots aren’t in the ground you stand on? How do you find belonging in a country that uprooted your family? Belonging is a state of being. Place is your association to that. I belong where I feel safe. You belong where you’re accepted. I asked my mother how she’s seen Omaha change during her time here. She said:
“We didn’t change, we evolved. Omaha stayed the same, the same people had families. They opened businesses. We made our own community. Americans moved west and we stayed and made our community here.”
My worldview was shaped by my mother. She misses her country, but is it still hers? She relinquished her Mexican citizenship to be here. I don’t know the difference between being American and being Mexican. I was never in Mexico long enough to find out. I think of peoples’ questions about my ethnic origin as misguided investigations into understanding more about that difference. People who expect me to respond in Spanish, find out my Spanish isn’t that great. People who tell me about their trips to Cancun, find out my mother was raised in Cuernavaca Morelos, far from a beach resort. My family’s stories of the Rio Grande, camping in the desert for seven days, sleeping under bridges, and medical mistreatment are all I have. These are my roots.
Perhaps the most American thing you can feel is not having a sense, a true sense of belonging. This melting pot of a country changes what it means to belong. Why else would people preoccupy themselves with the question, “Where are you from?” Holding multiple intersecting identities has helped me understand some of the nuances embedded in that question. To many, I’ll never be seen as fully “American.” To others, I’ll never be authentically “Mexican.” Being both here and elsewhere means belonging happens at the borders in between.
David Muñoz is a playwright and actor who has studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Upstanding Citizens Brigade in New York City. He's worked in sketch comedy and improv to hone his craft. Since the pandemic, he has focused on writing, producing, and performing independent theatre in Omaha.