Autoethnography

This piece represents my connection with my Cuban culture and the culture of South Florida. As I was making this painting, I felt as if I have been making it over and over all semester long. It seemed so repetitive. But for some reason that is where I am now. The longer I live away from what I always called home, the more I long to connect to it. I haven't lived in Miami for almost 7 years now yet I find myself connecting to the culture and seeing it more and more as a part of who I am.

This piece literally bridges my family's Cuban culture with the South Florida culture I grew up in with my family's passport pictures. My face is made up of old family photos. Some of people I knew growing up... Some who I never met... Yet all make up who I am today. This painting also emphasizes my connection to strong women in my family. All of the pictures are of my mother's side of the family and of her mother's side of the family. Being raised by strong women who didn't know they were strong also made me who I am today. I was always encouraged to be independent and never to depend on others. I was led by examples that they did not know they were setting.

At this point in my life, I have one year left of grad school and my boyfriend has two. I am from South Florida, he is from Central New York. We have already discussed where we would like to be in a few years, when we are done with school and trying to figure out where we are going to live. It is physically impossible to live near both families. This realization that my time away from my family will suddenly become "permanent" is what I feel is drawing me to hold on to as much as my culture as possible.

How will I pass on my culture? My boyfriend is white, and does not speak Spanish. If I want my children to hold on to my culture it rests on my shoulders... They will most likely not grow up like I did. In a city where I was not a minority, where the majority (if not all at some points) of my friends' parents were immigrants, where my culture took over...

Going to college was in many ways like going to another country for me. Its a concept thats hard to explain unless you have grown up where I did, but college was the first time I felt like I stood out. I stood out in a good way, I felt special, I wasn't one of many anymore. This positive experience with having my culture separate me from the rest was probably due to the fact that it happened in college and not elementary school when it was more importnat to fit in. I grew up in a place where growing up a "minority" was very different than it would have been anywhere else in the US. Therefore, as I have mentioned many times before my "Miami culture" and the inclusion I got from being cuban-american is just as much of who I am as my "Cuban culture.

This is a topic I will continue to explore... I will probably paint this/create this idea over and over again. As a cuban-american who looks and sounds "white" I feel the need to constantly legitimize myself as a minority. Which is probably part of the reason I feel the need to continually address this topic. I am interested to see where this goes...