Gabriela was born and raised in America. Both her parents are Dominicans who moved to the United States in the 1980s because of their family. Gabriela’s mother came when she was 27. Her first husband lived in the United States before meeting her in Dominican Republic. After their marriage, they moved to the United States. Gabriela’s grandmother brought her son, Gabriela’s father, to the United States after the divorce of Gabriela’s grandparents. Gabriela’s parents met each other at New York City and formed a family.
Gabriela and her sister
As a child, Gabriela found her dual identities as both American-born and Dominican something that was not influential. In fact, she was too young to find any significant meaning. “Not really, because I was young, I was able to do easily because I wasn’t afraid of being judged for it [being Dominican], since I didn’t know what that even meant.” In addition, she attended multicultural schools. She met Spanish speakers in middle school, and she encountered a lot of Hispanics in high school. When Gabriela was in school, she experienced other cultures, but never considered herself the odd-one. This optimism in her attitude due to not knowing the meaning of different ethnicities is essential to her development when she is older.
Making friends for Gabriela was an easy task. She has Hispanic friends and non-Hispanic friends. She knows how to interact with different friends. She is able to handle her relationship well, making her identity as a Dominican American something she finds unable to hinder with her daily life. This ability proves significant in the development of Gabriela’s pride in her own identity.
[Gabriela and making friends]
Gabriela [center] and her eighth grade class
As Gabriela gets older, she becomes aware of the effects of her dual identity. She begins to develop opinions over Dominic Republic. She used to visit the country when she was about twelve or thirteen. At that time, she went through a phase where she preferred New York over Dominican Republic. As a more mature person, Gabriela realized that her home country is better than she thought. She finds her old opinions “ridiculous.” It was ridiculous because Gabriela realized that Dominican Republic is a country that she should be proud of. This country provided the customs and traditions that her family follows. These customs make up who she is. Denying the country is denying her own identity.
The culture from Dominic Republic, as discovered by Gabriela, is celebrated in the household all the time. She speaks Spanish at home with her parents and sister. They ate customary Dominican Republican food. And she listens to the music. The music she listens to include “Pacheco y Masucci” by Pupi y su Charanga, which reminds Gabriela of her family (See below). When her family has a gathering, she would listen to Spanish songs. Otherwise, she usually listen to English songs. At home, Gabriela definitely feels more Dominican than outside the home, but she has Spanish speaking friends at school. At the home, at school, and with her friends, Gabriela has to balance between her Dominican and American identities.
“Sometimes I don’t identify it[Dominican], because I think I’m too American to be Dominican. But sometimes I feel like I’m too Dominican to be American. So it’s hard sometimes to find a balance between the two.”
Gabriela is proud of her dual identities as an American and a Dominican, and she finds visiting the country during the summer exciting. As she became older, she lost any ill opinions on her parents’ home country, and she starts to enjoy the wonderful culture and traditions she can find in the country.
[Gabriela and her feelings over Dominican Republic]
Gabriela at Dominican Republic
A personal goal that Gabriela has is to spread across a message that she finds important.
[Gabriela and her personal goal]
Feeling the opinions from more traditional elderly, Gabriela finds it important that people know that one should be proud of his or her identity and that people should not feel pressured to feel one way about his or her identity.
Right now, Gabriela finds herself a skilled balancer between two identities. She knows when she can switch between identities or be both at the same time. The underlying fact about this is that she is proud of both her identities, and she is also an ambassador for their cultures.
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