“Se Habla Espanol” Summary and Personal Response
First Last Name
Prof.
ENG 115 – English Comp.
00/00/2015

This is the story of Tanya Barrientos journey from a child who saw herself as any other Caucasian person but ashamed of who she actually was to becoming someone who embraces her heritage and has a deep appreciation for her culture.
Tanya and her family came to the U.S. when she was only three years old in the sixties. She and her brother were raised to be as American as possible by putting aside their language and culture and living by the presumable ‘American Dream’. She says as a child “I liked being the brown girl who defied expectations” (pg. 58). It wasn’t until the year she and her brother started school late that she caught a glimpse of racism when the person in charge of registering children for school made the comment “You people. Your children are always behind, and you have the nerve to bring them in late?” And my mother came back to her with “My children will be at the top of their classes in two weeks!” (pg. 58)
Tanya mentions that her family lived in a predominantly white neighborhood in West Texas devoid of color, and she believed that people who did speak Spanish were considered poor and could only work menial labor jobs. It didn't affect Tanya that her parents spoke Spanish because she knew they were from another country; she felt she was above Hispanics and didn't want to be one.
As a teenager, Tanya confessed to her father that she disliked being thought of as Mexican. After that, her father decided to send her to Mexico City in hopes that she would have a better understanding and appreciation of the Mexican culture, but it would take time.
By the time she finished school she began to see herself as what she called “an odd Hispanic hybrid” (pg. 59), she could understand the language, but she was too scared to speak it. Over the next twenty years, ideas and attitudes about different races began changing, children in schools where being taught deeper ideas about other cultures. Despite these changes, she still felt like an outsider due to her language barrier and so began her mission to learn the language that for so long she rejected.
As time went on she began to have a greater understanding of what it meant to be Latino and as a reporter she used the medium to share that with the world. It gave her an opportunity to ask others like her about their experiences in assimilating into the American culture.
In some ways, I can identify with Tanya and her fear of acceptance. I'm bi-racial but only by appearances would someone assume I'm either Latino, Hispanic, Caucasian or a host of other nationalities. Like Tanya I felt alone and disconnected socially outside of my family but with time I learned to embrace my bi-racial ethnicity and came to the understanding that from two halves comes great things I grew up in two different worlds, one black and another white. Although I didn't have a language barrier, such as the one that Tanya struggled to overcome, mine was racial, and eventually I embraced it.

References
Roen, D., Glau, G.R. & Maid, B.M (2011). ENG115: The brief McGraw-Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for life: (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, Pages From 57 - To 61.