English | Brazilian
I was never baptised, and my father didn’t want anything to do with religion, therefore I assume we were nonbelievers. I guess you could say atheist. Nevertheless, I was always taught not to steal, not to swear, not to kill etc. you know the good basics from religion. At school I was not allowed to participate in religion classes because my father didn’t believe it was necessary. So, I don’t identify through religion. I have three different races in me and as you will see it’s hard to identify with any of them. Being a female does not make me identify any differently.
I don’t really feel like I do identify myself with anything at the moment. I am very lost, and my races are very confusing at the moment. Nevertheless, I do embrace them. Depending where I am I tend to identify differently. For example, if I am in Europe and people ask me where I am from, I say Brazilian. If I were to be in Brazil, I would say European. Where I am dictates where I identify from that day. This makes me stand out as different and I like it. I like showing off the different languages I can speak from the different cultures I am from.
My Mother is from a place called Solanea in Paraiba/Brazil. My Dad is from Chelsea in London/UK. They met in Jerez – Andalucía/Spain. When my Mother was around 18-19 years old she moved to Spain to give my older brother (a 2-year-old boy at the time) a better life. However, she could not bring him with her due to money. From what I know she arrived in Spain with nothing and worked many waitressing jobs. My Father who at the time lived in Spain with his Mother (32 years old) was a truck driver who flew planes as a hobby in his spare time. From what my parents told me, my Mother was working at a restaurant near where my Dad flew his planes and she built up the courage to ask him for a ride. She didn’t speak English and he didn’t speak Portuguese, both of their Spanish was very wishy washy so in reality I don’t know how they understood each other, but it worked. Next thing they know she is 22 and pregnant with me. When my parents got married in Gibraltar my Mother was 7 months pregnant with me. My Father then adopted my older brother and payed for him to come home to us (he was 5 years old).
Everything my Mother did in the home was from Brazil. The food, the decorations and the lifestyle, because this is all she knew. She eventually learnt to speak Spanish and English, my Father never learnt Portuguese. In the home everyone spoke a different language to me (Spanish/Portuguese or English). I don’t think my parents actively tried to combine their cultures, but it worked out well. My English Grandmother was always around talking about her upbringing in England. We also visited Brazil most Christmases, which at first was really weird. My Brazilian Grandmother was very lower class and it was a shock to see this since my English grandmother was very middle-class English. Nonetheless, my life was in Spain and I lived their culture mixed with my Mothers and my Dads. Going to an international school really helped to see how much culture variation I had in my character.
I think interracial relationships are good because it unties people from being from only one place and becoming people of the world. My Grandparents never spoke about this in their generation, so I don’t really know what it must have been like for them. Albeit, I believe it would still be difficult for my Dad to accept a boyfriend from a different culture, which is upsetting for me.
My culture does not affect the way I choose my partner. Since I am culturally mixed, I tend to take the best things out of my cultures and combine them to make a better world for myself.
The major positive about being mixed-race is the opportunity I have had to understand more than one point of view. Even though it is a small part of what the world is made of it has allowed me to learn more about the different countries, their views and their moralisations.
A challenge I encounter is not looking a certain way. I don’t look Brazilian, I don’t look English, I don’t look Spanish. This makes it hard to fit in anywhere, because of in-group identity. For example, if a group of people don’t believe you belong in their group, they don’t allow you to be part of them. So not having a certain accent or looking a certain way has made it difficult for me to belong. Since no matter where I was Spain, UK or Brazil I always felt like I didn’t belong even though that is exactly where I was from.
Then I have the opposite problem where I sometimes conform to try and look a certain way and start losing myself.
I study in the UK at the moment and therefore experience the culture every day. However, I love Spanish music and the Spanish community. They are very friendly funny people who can sometimes be very sassy. I love walking around and hearing Spanish people around me, it amazes me how many more people I understand due to my culture. My parents lived in Spain for a long time and now live in Gibraltar. Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located in the south of Spain. The place is crazy, it’s like Britain in the sun, but even better because of the hint of Spanish influence. Spain is also just a 10-minute border cross away, where I tend to spend my weekends when I visit my parents. When it comes to Brazil, I read in Portuguese. The way the Brazilians write makes me feel like I am with them. They have amazing hearts and I always thought their emotions are 100x more than any other people I know. I have lots of family there, even some I have not met. I try to go as much as I can but life there is hard and expensive to go. I speak all three languages everyday with different people.
I am a part time teaching assistant at a special education school in Cardiff. My workplace currently does have people from different countries however these are minimal at the moment. The kids however do come from all different parts of the world. My course does have some international students; however they tend to be Asian rather than Latinos or Hispanics which I would love to see more of.
If I were to be born again, I would return the same way, however, I would add at least 5 more languages to the ones I learnt when I was young. This is so I could talk to more people than I already can and learn about them and their ways of life.
I love the culture I have made for myself. Albeit, psychologically I find myself lost. It is hard to feel like a belong anywhere because I don’t fit into any of the templates that people know about the places I am from. I think this is because people like to only belong to one place or identify, usually from where they are from and therefore don’t accept other people who don’t fit into this criterion to be from the same place. I always was told you can’t be from here you don’t sound Brazilian or you’re not British you sound American. In Andalucía where I was born, they tend to have a strong accent and usually use a lot of slang. Even though I grew up there I was taught the capital Spanish (Madrid). Like a more sophisticated and posh Spanish. This was frowned upon because I didn’t sound like them and therefore, I must be a foreigner.
Sometimes because of my fair complexion (especially in the winter), people around me start talking badly about foreigners and the jobs they take up. Even my friends have done this in the past. When I remind them, I too was not brought up here but I am trying to contribute and become the best psychiatrist I can to help children they usually get embarrassed and apologise. I explain that foreigners are not here to go against people but rather to build a better life for themselves.