American Like Me

Reflections on Life Between Cultures

America Ferrera

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781471180071
• eBook ISBN: 9781471180088
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

An emotionally and politically charged collection of first person accounts from prominent citizens in a variety of fields about their experiences being first generation Americans, with a powerful foreword written by actress and activist America Ferrera. From award-winning actress and political activist America Ferrera comes an absorbing and fascinating collection of essays written by prominent Americans from a variety of fields about their experiences being first generation Americans. As the daughter of Honduran immigrants, Ferrara is enthusiastic to share dozens of personal stories from notable actors, comedians, athletes, politicians, artists and entrepreneurs about assimilating into American culture while remaining inextricably connected to the mother tongue and the father land. Contributors to the book will include Lin-Manuel Miranda, Roxane Gay, Issa Rae, Kal Penn, Padma Lakshmi, Liza Koshy, Uzo Aduba, Al Madrigal, Anjelah Johnson, Carmen Perez, Wilmer Valderrama, Kumail Nanjiani, Jeremy Lin, Joy Cho, Jenny Zhang, Laurie Hernandez, Michelle Kwan, Ravi Patel, and many others. Ranging from heartfelt to hilarious, the essays in AMERICAN LIKE ME will appeal to anyone from a first generation family; those interested in identity, particularly national identity; and anyone with a complicated relationship to family, culture, and growing up.

PHOTO BY WANDA VARGAS-HERNANDEZ

Laurie Hernandez is an American-born, second-generation Puerto Rican gymnast, an Olympic gold medalist, and the youngest-ever champion on Dancing with the Stars. At the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janiero, Laurie won silver in the individual balance beam competition and gold in the team final.

Laurie Hernandez

IT WAS ONE OF the greatest moments of my life. I was sixteen years old and I’d just heard my name called. My lifelong dream had just come true. I was going to the Olympics! This was something I had wanted since I was five years old.

I will never forget the feeling of finding out I’d made the cut. This was before gymnastics fans and journalists started calling me the “Human Emoji,” but I am pretty sure I was making alllll the emoji faces that day. Especially the ones involving laughing and crying at the same time.

But another very memorable thing happened that day. Right after they called my name, the journalists were lined up, asking me questions. And one of them said with a huge excited smile:

“Laurie, how does it feel to be the first US-born Latina gymnast to make the US Olympic team in more than thirty years?”

This caught me off guard. My whole life I didn’t plan to be “the First Latina Gymnast to Make the Olympic Team.” I never really thought about it in those terms. So when this highly specific question was asked, I might have been making that emoji face where the yellow bald guy is showing all his teeth, and it looks like he’s cringing and sort of fake smiling at the same time. You know the one who looks like something really awkward just happened?

Or maybe I made the surprise emoji face. The one where the mouth and eyes look like perfect little o’s.

I wasn’t upset about what the reporter said. It was pretty cool to hear. But the truth is, I didn’t even know I was the first Latina to do this in thirty years. The even deeper truth is that I’d never even put much thought into the idea that I was a “Latina gymnast” in the first place. I was just Laurie, the girl who loved to work really, really hard at gymnastics.

The girl who clowned around a lot but was also super focused on being the best she could be and making her family proud.

Of course I knew I was Latina. But I never thought about the idea that I might be representing all Latinas.

My grandparents came to New York from Puerto Rico and had my parents in New York. My mom and dad grew up living around lots of other Puerto Ricans in New York. But by the time I came along, in 2000, my parents had moved to a quiet middle-class town called Old Bridge Township, New Jersey. They thought it would be a good place to raise me and my older brother and sister. They wanted us to be able to pursue our dreams—to be able to go to good schools, take gymnastics, and have a comfortable house with enough space for my grandma to live with us. And plenty of room for family dance parties, of course.

I remember coming downstairs as a kid and seeing my parents salsa dancing in the family room. They would be blasting the music—my dad loved Marc Anthony, Sergio Mendes, Ricky Martin, and Toco. I just referred to it as “Spanish music.” You know. Music where they sing in Spanish.

Maybe it was Puerto Rican, or Mexican, or Cuban, or American. I’m not really sure. Either way it was a lot of fun. I’d reach the bottom of the stairs, and my dad would extend a hand and pull me onto the “dance floor.” My grandma would always be there too.

“When I was a young girl in Puerto Rico, this is how we danced,” Grandma would say, while she demonstrated a very funny version of a merengue, moving her body as confidently as she would have if she were forty years younger.

“Okay, Grandma, but when I was a young girl in New Jersey, this is how I danced,” I would say, being super sassy and doing my best whip and nae nae.

Grandma would just laugh and shrug her shoulders watching me demonstrate my moves. We all had fun no matter what style of dance we were doing, and we all had good rhythm. I didn’t even realize how good my sense of rhythm was until I was working on floor routines at gymnastics practice. The dance part of it always came so easily to me. Meanwhile, some of the other girls would have trouble finding the beat. But me and my Puerto Rican grandma could always find it just fine.

When we told my grandma I had made it onto the Olympic team, she just calmly nodded her head and said without any emotion, “Great. Good job, honey.” My mom and I exchanged a look. We knew what was going on. Grandma hadn’t really understood what we told her and was just doing her smile-and-nod thing. Even though her English was pretty good, she would sometimes tire of translating everything in her head and just kind of tune us out. She missed some major news that time. But she made up for it two weeks later when she came running and screaming from her bedroom. She had been watching her favorite telenovelas on Univision and had seen a commercial come on about me and my teammates going to the Olympics.

“Mamita! Mamita!” (She always called me this.) “You’re going to the Olympics! I’m so proud, mamita!”

And then a stern but smiling glance: “Lauren, why didn’t you tell meeeeeee?!”

She didn’t get to attend the Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro when I competed. Her health wasn’t good enough to handle the traveling. But it didn’t matter, because she had been there every step of the way—my whole life, helping me become who I am.

My parents worked a lot, and my brother and sister are several years older than I am. So when I was a kid, I spent a whole lot of one-on-one time with Grandma. Since she lived with us, she was always there for me. She used to help me get ready for school in the mornings. I had wild curly hair—I still do—and my grandma used to try to keep it out of my face. She was a practical and tough woman who would not allow herself to lose a battle with a pigtail.

My mom was a lot gentler and didn’t always win the war, but when Grandma set her mind to it, she made perfect pigtails. She would pull my hair so tight that she’d end up ripping hairs out of my head trying to get my kinky hair to behave. Then she’d drop me off at school on her way to the senior center every morning. My hair always looked amazing, and hers did too.

If it was raining, she’d tie a plastic bag over her head to protect her do. Maybe most kids would have been embarrassed by their grandma walking around with a bag on her head. But I wasn’t. I just couldn’t be. Because that’s just who Grandma was, and I didn’t care who saw it.

One of my friends at school was a girl named Jessica Hernandez. It was a crazy coincidence that she had the same last name as me—especially because she was Chinese.

We were some o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Introduction by America Ferrera
• Reshma Saujani
• Al Madrigal
• Jenny Zhang
• Bambadjan Bamba
• Padma Lakshmi
• Randall Park
• Roxane Gay
• Carmen Perez
• Issa Rae
• Diane Guerrero
• Joy Cho
• Liza Koshy
• Kumail Nanjiani
• Michelle Kwan
• Geena Rocero
• Frank Waln
• Auli’i Cravalho
• Jeremy Lin
• America Ferrera
• Ravi V. Patel
• Lin-Manuel Miranda
• Tanaya Winder
• Wilmer Valderrama
• Anna Akana
• Laurie Hernandez
• Kal Penn
• Anjelah Johnson-Reyes
• Martin Sensmeier
• Carmen Carrera
• Uzo Aduba
• Linda Sarsour
• Joaquin Castro
• Conclusion by America Ferrera
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright