Not because I wasn’t proud of my Mexican heritage. Sometimes I was just too tired to defend it. Even in the first grade, I learned it was much easier if you didn’t talk with an accent and didn’t bring egg burritos to school for lunch. Then, in college, I suffered a whole new identity crisis. I was constantly scolded by strangers who would look at my brown skin and not understand why my Spanish was limited. It didn’t matter to them that we spoke English at home because my dad was trying to learn the language. Instead, they told me in English, “Your parents should be ashamed of themselves.” I
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