As we approach Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15 to Oct. 15), I was invited to write an essay about my intersecting identities as Latina and Jewish.
As I was about to start writing, I found a stash of my college students’ “biopoems”—simple, structured poems with open-ended prompts for people to share about themselves. I flipped through them and found my own biopoem. I was struck by my own response to the prompt asking for a place of residence: “Resident of the in-between worlds of culture.” I’ve been using the word “liminality” to describe that in-between state. Looking up the definition, liminality is defined as a threshold or transition state. It’s close, but it doesn’t quite capture my intersecting Jewish and Latina/ Mexican American identities, that state of in-betweenness.
Some years ago, I started to think of ways to visually explore this concept. As I sat at a local beach, I began to draw Venn diagrams to try to capture the intersection between my identities, using the purple and brown sand to explore how they sometimes act separately, sometimes overlap and sometimes wash into each other, becoming inseparable.
I’m still thinking of Venn diagrams as a way to speak of the intersectionality of these identities. In the process of thinking about this essay, I researched Venn diagrams. (Research rabbit holes are my go-to place when I’m conceiving of new visual work.) I read how John Venn popularized the diagram style showing the logical relation between two or more sets. While reading about him, I start to make inks using natural ingredients: black walnuts, blueberries, flor de Jamaica (hibiscus) and other ingredients from my kitchen and neighborhood. I drew circles with the inks. I felt like an alchemist as I created, altered and transformed these drawings in my attempt to capture what it means to be both Latina and Jewish (see “Figure 1,” above).
As I drew, I reflected on why I feel it’s important to use natural inks. Maybe it’s because inks flow into each other and interact with each other, just as identities do. And just as I added other ingredients from my kitchen to transform the color of the inks, I thought of the contexts we experience in life that alter aspects of our identities.
In an earlier piece I wrote about identity and vulnerability, I reflected on my childhood in Mexico, attending a Jewish school, as most Mexican Jewish children did, and having a large part of my social life revolve around the Jewish community. At the same time, as the fourth generation of my family in Mexico, its culture, history and sensibilities shaped my daily life. How do I represent these two identities visually? I went to my studio and made a few drawings of a circle within a circle. Was being Jewish part of my larger Mexican identity, or vice versa? (See “Figure 2,” above.)
When I moved to the U.S.—Texas, to be precise—at the start of high school, my identities shifted in this new context. Hearing my accent, people would ask me where I was from. Because of my light skin, my classmates guessed I was from Spain or Italy. When I told them I was Mexican, some of them never spoke to me again. I quickly learned that being Mexican was not welcomed in a place rife with anti-Mexican sentiment, racism and discrimination. As a result, my Mexican identity shifted to the foreground, while my Jewish identity slowly became relegated to the background. In college—a new and larger setting—I could choose with whom and in what context to share my Jewish identity. I explored this visually by having a small circle represent my Jewish identity within the larger circle that stands for my Mexican American identity (see “Figure 3,” above).
As an adult teaching at a university, I have experienced colleagues who try to separate my identities. Sometimes it’s convenient for them to count me as Latina. At other times, they attempt to dismiss or strip away my Latina identity because I’m Jewish and/or of European descent. At these times, I find my Jewish and Latina identities intersect as a source of strength (see “Figure 4,” below).
As a Latina and Jewish person, I cannot claim that the ways my identities intersect represent those of other Jewish Latinos. Each one of us has our own respective contexts—including our family’s geographies; whether we were raised in the U.S. or migrated as children, teens or adults; our gender; the language(s) we speak in and outside our homes; our skin color; our acceptance, rejection, privilege or marginalization in our respective Jewish and Latino communities. These contexts shape our particular identities and their intersectionality.
There are many nuances to our identities, just as there are with inks. The intersectionality of our identities shift, ebb and flow with the passage of time and with changing contexts, including national and global contexts. For me, being Latina and Jewish already feels different now than it did before Oct. 7. I find myself moving my Jewish identity to the foreground, next to my Latina identity (see “Figure 5,” below).
While I boiled acorn caps to make ink for one of my pieces, I re-read sections of Gloria Anzaldúa’s seminal book, “Borderlands.” I landed on a word she uses that perfectly captures my intersecting identities: “intersticios”—“Intersticios: the spaces between the different worlds [I] inhabit.” It is in these interstices that my Latina and Jewish identities flow into each other, creating a hybrid space (see “Figure 6,” below).
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