Speak Spanish?

Do you speak Spanish?

Ay, Dios mío...

This the most asked question that I have ever received. I know that not many know that not everyone that lives in a Spanish speaking household speaks Spanish. I speak more Spanglish than anything.

Spang·lish /ˈspaNGɡliSH/

noun

a hybrid language combining words and idioms from both Spanish and English, especially Spanish speech that uses many English words and expressions.

In my mom's defense, she spoke to me in Spanish all the time. Cooked all my favorite Puerto Rican dishes. Shoot I make them better than her now (shh, don't tell her I said that). The fact of the matter is that she did her job to make sure that I knew about my culture. She cooked for me and spoke to me in Spanish daily. However, at that age no one that I was around that looked like me even spoke Spanish. If they did they didn't tell me. I looked black, but not "black enough". I was right there in the middle. The middle of not knowing that I am in fact a Black woman but a Latina as well.

I actually spoke about this in a podcast episode. I will drop the link below.

I was someone so ashamed of speaking Spanish as a child that now I am regretting being so ashamed of it. In my episode, I talk about the struggles of being trying to figure out who I was.

NEWS FLASH!

Yes, there are plenty of white/black Latinxs that do not speak Spanish. I think people have this misconception that everyone speaks "should" speak Spanish if they are Latinx.

So yes... to answer everyone's question I am a Black woman that happens to know a little Spanish, but not enough to have full conversations. That doesn't make me any less than the next person.