Narrative Essay About My Cuban Culture

When I was younger, I never felt out of place. I didn't even know what out of place was, I was always just me. When asked where I was from, I would always say America, obviously. I never regarded my Cuban culture and I resented the fact that I didn't look like the blonde, blue-eyed actresses that dominated the media. As I got older I started appreciating my Hispanic roots more, but I still didn't feel like I truly belonged anywhere. My parents are immigrants. My father came to the United States in 1967, when he was 5 years old. My mother came in 1997, at 18 years old. My father, although Cuban through and through, is not the typical Hispanic immigrant that people expect. He speaks Spanish like a foreigner and has difficulty reading it, let alone writing it. He had a son at 17 and never went to college. His life reads like the character of a teen drama: teenage dad struggling to make ends meet to support his family. My mom, on the other hand, speaks English with a heavy accent and went back to school in her 30s. The one thing they both have in common is they are both extremely

I don't speak Spanish at home and my parents are really lenient with me as far as grades and going out. When I talk to my friends about our situations at home, they make fun of me for being so "white". I don't see myself as any different from them, but to them, even the way I speak is considered "white". To me, I am simply me. I don't really define my cultural identity as anything other than Cuban-American, but that's what I was taught when I was younger. When my friends and even my parents talk about being cubano and how close they feel to their country, I feel left out. Sure, I share the same traditions as them and we eat the same foods, but I don't feel like a cubana. I don't speak Spanish as well as other people that I know. Most of the time, I feel like I am pretending to fit in to a culture that is only a small part of