Reflections on Hispanic Heritage Month - Part One

I've mentioned more than once before that my relationship with my Latino heritage is, shall we say, "complicated". Technically I qualify: with 3 grandparents born in Puerto Rico, and a third in the Phillipines. Culturally, I'm suburban milktoast white, a resoundingly successful experiment in assimilation on the part of my parents. They escaped Brooklyn when I was only a few months old and embraced the sterility of middle class life with vigor. By the time I was growing up, I had no idea that there had been a dramatic transition only a generation before me. And while I came of age having zero sense of ethnic identity, only later in my adulthood did I begin to suspect that something got lost along the way.

Mind you, I recognize that the aforementioned "loss" is by design. My grandparents, immigrants in Depression Era Brooklyn, knew that their accents and foreign-sounding names were impediments to success. They gave their children English first names, made sure they kept up with schoolwork, and - in short - let them become American. One generation later, the circuit is complete. I didn't know that my surname was Spanish until I was in Junior High School.

(It's my intention to continue this thread, since even in my 50s I find my identity to be a work in progress. Stay tuned.)