Snow White Chicana by Sara Roman

Your such a little Guerra.
You must be the mail man’s baby
What you don’t speak Spanish
What kind of Mexican are you?

Questions and statements like these were the words that tormented me
Growing up A little Snow White Chicana
searching for identity in a society who’s white washed lies could not define me
was strange indeed.

My brown eyes
were a symbol of the brown pride
instilled inside me
but it went unseen.

Goes to show
Eyes blinded by stereo types will always deceive
Picked and poked at by friends and family
They made me feel like it was wrong

Like my porcelain pigment was not a gift of European decent
or the diversity that binds this blood
the beauty that bags these bones
the skin that houses my home

It is a gift
My temple is full of pride in my ancestry
the good and the bad in me
and I am aware of my history now
but the battles I fought within myself
to not hate the skin I grew in then
made for a reckless adolescents undeserving of the ignorance

Truth is
I just wanted to fit in
So I’d tease my bangs extra high
and adorn my eyes with lines extra wide
even pierced my skin with them three dots one time

Had to prove it was a crazy life
Because even though my skin was white
I was brown inside
and even I could be a chola

But that was just a phase
I got over it by 9th grade
And that’s just about the time I had my first nightmare with self tanner
Silly Snow White Chicana would rather take the shade Umpa Lumpa
than the tone that she got from her Mama

It wasn’t until my college years that I let go of that drama
took a seat in Chicano Studies
learned to love my ghostly epidermis
and realized the true value of the color I’d been fighting all those years

For there is a truth here
and it slaps reality into the false identity that stares our youth in the face each day
We were not made to poke fun at each other and there is not just one race
And all of these different shades are what make us more the same

And though I am proud of my Raza
the hate that exists within the confines of color is a disgrace
and I am no longer ashamed
The pain, anguish and courage endured to create my Spanish Mexica mixture
and Mestizo culture is something I am proud of today

See,
We have nothing to prove
and to me
Brown Pride means celebrating our culture and educating our youth
and standing up for the one’s we exclude

The greatest thing we could ever do is tell the people the truth
Yet, Chicano history is absent in most of the books provided to our youth
and so they’ve just a small clue of all the colors that they should be proud of too
There’s no running from the fact that Kids’ will always tease kids in the school yard
and we may never know the complete truth

American History will always be askew
and that is why it is up to me and it is up to you
to teach all the little brown ones
little white ones,
little black, red, purple, yellow ones
the reasons they are perfect
*****
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Sara Romelia Roman was born in Alamagordo, NM. She is the co-owner of Two Stoned Betties art studio. She currently lives in Albuquerque, NM. Read more about Sara

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