As a high school student Terry dreamed of going away to college, but she knew her Cuban parents would never allow it. And Juleyka speaks with filmmaker and activist Denise Soler Cox about how to tackle the ongoing push and pull between Latino family expectations and our self-determination.
Terry Catasús Jennings is an award-wining children's book writer and the author of The Little House of Hope and its translation, La Casita de Esperanza. Learn more about her work here.
Featured Expert:
Denise Soler Cox is an mission-based business entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker and filmmaker who uses her experience to transform lives through storytelling. Fueled by her own identity (and identity crisis) as a first-generation American Latina born to Puerto Rican parents in New York, she Co-Founded Project Eñye in 2014. Project Enye is a multimedia production company whose purpose is to transform how we think about culture, identity, and what it means to belong. Denise's first film, Being Enye (ñ) is an interactive, story-driven, multi-platform, documentary project featuring first-person narratives from 1st generation American-born Latinos, also known as Enyes (ñ)s. She is the author of "#OwnYourEnye: Lessons on Language Family, Food & Owning Your Latinidad" and co-authored her first educational curriculum "#OwnyourEnye for Education." In September 2020 Denise was recognized as a “Featured Host” by Apple Podcast North America for her podcast “The Self-ish Latina.”. She has been invited to speak on over 150 stages including two TEDx talks and has worked with some of the world’s most recognized brands like Microsoft, Facebook, LinkedIn, JP Morgan Chase, Salesforce, Procter & Gamble, Dow Jones, Eli Lilly, Starbucks, and VaynerMedia, etc. Her work has been published as a contributor in Huffington Post. She has been featured in Forbes as a “Trailblazing Latina” and also on CNN, CNN Money, Chicago Tribune, Fox News Latino, HOLA, ABC, CBS, and NBC.
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Juleyka Lantigua:
Hi, everybody. Today, we welcome Terry. She and her family came to the US from Cuba in the early '60s, when she was a child. Years later, when she was about to graduate from high school, Terry really wanted to leave home and go away to college, just like all her friends, but she was certain her parents would never allow it so she didn't even bring it up. Let's get into it.
Terry: My name is Terry Catasús Jennings. I was born in Cuba, and I came to the United States when I was 12 years old, in 1961. I am a writer, and I am the author of the upcoming The Little House of Hope and also it's translation, La Casita de Esperanza. When I was young, I called my parents, Mamí y Papí. We did not talk, what can I say? There's some families where you get your feelings out and you say, "Oh, well, I feel this way and I feel that way." My family, I obeyed and I said yes. Not that my parents were unreasonable, neither one of them was.
Terry: We moved to Richmond, Virginia, where I was the only Cuban in my high school. I had always, always wanted to be a writer and my parents would never have agreed with that. I was fairly good in math and my dad was a banker and I thought, "Well, okay, I can major in math," because an immigrant needs a paycheck. They were very supportive about me going to college. I had to pay for it myself by working because they didn't have the money. They said, "You're staying home to go to college." The University of Richmond was in Richmond, but I had always wanted to go away. It was one of those things that we never really talked about, and I wish that we had.
Terry: When I was a junior, I started looking at this and saying, "I really need to be away from my parents. I really need to be somewhere else." I wanted to just be able to not have any supervision. Not that I was a bad kid, but I wanted to be pretty much on my own. I felt guilty in a way, because my mom, she kept saying, "Well, you're not helping me with the house, you're not helping me with the cleaning." Of course, I was working 40 hours a week, I was going to school and I kept saying, "What more do you want?" I think, in retrospect, now being a mother, having had two children, in retrospect, what she wanted was my time, she wanted me.
Terry: But I wanted my independence, I wanted to take care of my own self, I wanted to be with my friends. I didn't want to be different. There's one thing, I did not want to be different. Gosh, out of the kids that I graduated with, I was the one that stayed at home. I lost touch with a lot of the friends because they were all in this school and that school and they were writing to each other. There was a bunch of them at Madison, there was a bunch of them at William & Mary and all this, and there I was by myself in Richmond.
Terry: There wasn't any time that we talked about whether I could go to a school away from home, because I knew what the answer was going to be. If I had originally gotten my numbers together and said, "Look, it's going to be a lot less to go to a school away from home," or I would've said, "Hey, I may want to be in engineering. I'm a math major, maybe Virginia Tech is better than the University of Richmond for this," I might have been able to convince my parents of that, but I didn't do any of that. And, in all honesty, my parents didn't have the time. They were trying to get food on the table and they were working so much that it was all up to me to do all the research. I should have gone to a school counselor, but I didn't do it. Then when I started learning about things that I could have gone away to school, it was too late and it wasn't worth having a conversation that I knew was going to bring them grief. It would've been an argument.
Terry: I still hear it from Latinx families and I still see it. I think that the parents want to have their children close to them so they can keep eyes on them, so they can see that they are safe, so they can see that they're not straying away down some horrible path in this new country that they don't know everything about. I wish we had talked more about that and I had brought that up.
Terry: I lost them young. My dad died right after my daughter was born and my mom died soon after. I see now the conversations between us and our adult children, it would've been so nice to have been able to have those conversations with them. I will tell you that my son came back from college, and so he wanted to move into an apartment with a bunch of his friends. I wrote him this little letter saying, "Okay, these are the things that you could do if you stayed home and saved money and then bought your own place," and he said, "Forget it." When you get older, your children become your best friends. My children are my best friends. I wish that I had been my parents' best friends, but I didn't have that opportunity.
Lantigua: In the '90s, a full three decades later, I went through a very similar struggle as Terry, I get it. On the show, we hear stories like this all the time. How can we manage this push and pull as first gens? How can we balance what we want for ourselves, for our education, our ambitions, our lives, our careers, our partnerships, how can we balance all of that with what our families expect of us?
Lantigua: While there has been a ton of progress, and this show is also evidence of that, we hear it a lot, Terry's story really made me ask, are we stuck? Are we just going to repeat the same conversation generationally? I figured we need help, so I called in an expert.
Soler Cox: My name is Denise Soler Cox, and I'm one of the founders of Project Enye. We're a multimedia production company and we made a film that came out six years ago called Being Enye. It's about what it feels like to be a part of the Latino diaspora here in the United States and feel conflicted over your identity, your culture, and where you belong.
Lantigua: You listened to Terry's story.
Soler Cox: Yes.
Lantigua: What did you hear in her story?
Soler Cox: Well, first, I heard the story of so many Latinas who grappled with the exact same thing. I heard pain, frustration, even regret, and then also some reconciliation, and the relationship that she now has with her son, being put in a similar position, I heard some hope. I have been in this exact same conversation with different details hundreds of times over the last eight years. I hear it from adults that are probably Terry's age all the way down to 18 year olds that are in her literal situation right now.
Lantigua: What are some of the big themes that you hear and where are the pain points when people talk about going through this process?
Soler Cox: Yeah. The big theme is what I call the crunch. It's basically when you're caught between the expectations of your parents, which are also the expectations of our culture and collectivism, and your wants, needs and desires growing up in a country that prioritizes something called self-reliance, which is what she wanted. She wanted more for herself, she wanted to go to college, she wanted to get away from what binded her down, I hate to say it like that, but what was constricting her, the expectations of her parents that she would stay close and probably help in the house.
Lantigua: Yeah. I was listening to Terry, going, "Yep, had that conversation." She went through that in the '60s, I went through it in the early '90s, but as you say, people are having the exact same conversations in 2022.
Soler Cox: Yes.
Lantigua: What is it that has kept us Latinos from evolving in our understanding of what it means to have self-reliance, to go away to college, to be separated as a young person from your family? Why are we stuck?
Soler Cox: It's just something simply has not been distinguished, and that is many of our parents or grandparents came here for something better for themselves and ultimately their families and they continue to embrace collective values, which are beautiful, prioritizes family, prioritizes the group and staying together. The only hitch is, is that self-reliance is the dominant ideology and belief system here in the United States. The parents are delivering their children for a better life, but then when the kids actually want a better life, and especially when they're daughters, we have a little bit harder, it's just a fact, when we want something more, we stretch and want to do something more and bigger with our lives and really honor the sacrifice, but then we feel conflicted, like we're doing something wrong by pursuing something that's better for us, when really, when we actually pursue it, the degrees, the jobs, all of those things actually provide more, including pride, but more resources for the collective.
Soler Cox: What I say is once it's distinguished, the pull of the expectation of the promise of the future and the expectations of the past, once that is talked about distinguished and discussed, and once a child actually has a chance to share how they feel about it, that's when things can change. Also too, parents, parents having that distinction, which is why many parents at the screenings, before the pandemic I did a ton of screenings with my film, and parents would say, "Hi, I just want to hug you and thank you, and now we're going home to apologize to our children." I was like, "Go, go, go." It's hard, as a parent, to reconcile I might not be parenting my child in the best way. It's a beautiful thing to actually combine these two things, collectivism and self-reliance, and create some kind of beautiful hybrid that honors both.
Lantigua: First of all, I love that your film inspired parents to go home and apologize to their kids. I mean, you're performing miracles, I but here's the thing though. Sometimes self-reliance is often misunderstood as selfishness among immigrant parents, across the ethnic spectrum, not just Latino knows.
Soler Cox: Mm-hm, yeah.
Lantigua: How do you help parents and kids understand that those two things are not the same?
Soler Cox: Yeah. Well, great point. There's something called the singular perspective theory. It's basically we all believe that the way that we look at the world is the way that the world is. The best example I can give, you know those Danish cookies in the blue tin?
Lantigua: Yes.
Soler Cox: Oh, I have one right here. This, right here, is the cause of so many conflicts. Now, when I say, "What's in here?" there are going to be some people that are like, "Cookies," or some people that are like, "Scissors." Pictures, sewing kits, I've heard everything. They just know it to be true. I know that this is a silly example, but it's a way that we can begin to understand, no, I'm right and you are wrong. When we come into things with that righteousness, we don't even give it a chance and examine it, right?
Lantigua: Mm-hm.
Soler Cox: The issue is, I'm going to just use the word that's used, selfishness. What we lose is agency, especially for women. Here's how it works. When someone is thinking, "Oh, I really want to go to college. I want to go," but because she stayed at home and because the decisions that she made, which is in the past, we can't do anything about it, this isn't a judgment, but more just an analysis, she experiences a lack of agency over her own life.
Soler Cox: The thing is, what I heard in that recording was, "I knew I couldn't talk to them," she knew. Now, when a child is put in this situation, they truly believe that pursuing their own life and their own interests, even if it's to better themselves, which is so sad, means that they're selfish, then think about the other choices they end up making, especially women in their lives, and then think about how we, as a community of Latinos, overindex in incidences of domestic violence. These things are related. When we don't believe we have a choice, our life plays out like we don't have a choice, but when we practice self-reliance or selfishness, we begin to practice that muscle of what's going to be best for me.
Soler Cox: Now, the interpretation is what's best for me is wrong for you. That is just not true. What's best for me and what was best for her, she believes, is if she had a chance to go away and be whatever she wanted to be.
Lantigua: I often think about the fact that self-determination is not selfish, but it's a hard concept for us to accept because we see it as a zero sum game. If you make choices for yourself, you are defacto making choices against us, the group.
Soler Cox: Right.
Lantigua: But then there's also the question of obedience. This falls particularly hard on girls and women, obedience is very big with us. What do you do with something as intractable as obedience in the Latino culture?
Soler Cox: We talk about it, bringing all of these things up, Terry having the courage to share her story. It requires people sharing their story and then people listening and thinking, "What can I detangle about my situation?" and then that person, the listener, having the courage to have those hard conversations. Also too, examine when betrayal comes up, examine, because that is the number one word that I would hear. If I pursue this for me, like go to get a graduate degree, if I pursue some amazing opportunity for myself, I'm betraying them. Those two things, although they look true, although they feel true, they are not true or related.
Lantigua: You are coming with the word. This is why miracles are happening when you screen your film.
Lantigua: Here's another riddle. Often, our parents feel like they have to give up things or their reaction is to say, "Fine, I'm not getting involved, you're going to deal with the consequences." We're back to that zero sum of if I do this, then I don't need you, I don't want you involved, you're no longer relevant in my life. How do we get them to understand that it's not zero sum?
Soler Cox: Yeah. I mean, so this is, I'm going to say, the hardest place, the most challenging place, because it's connected to that reverence and the deference and the respect that is expected of us. When my work associates or personal friends are accustomed to seeing me without family around, specifically my mom, they have a more accurate view of the woman that I am. If they get a chance to see me with my mom, they see a different version of me. They see a version of me that acquiesces, that doesn't interrupt, that is quiet, that's calm. It's an interesting way of code switching. We assume this way that we have to be with our parents and family, and this is not my favorite version of me. My favorite version of me is the me that I'm being right now with you here today.
Soler Cox: But how do we reconcile this? Well, the best that we can do, that I can think of anyway, is to recognize that it's kind of like a dead end when the rule book of our parents, the rule book of collectivism, says, "You must defer to me. You must not question me. You must be obedient to me. You cannot talk back to me, there is no dialogue," which is actually the situation that I'm currently in with my own mom.
Lantigua: Wow.
Soler Cox: Yeah. The way that I'm able to deal with it and understand it is precisely this, there is no capacity to understand past that expectation of deference, obedience, and respect, I'm going to put that in quotes, because really when I respect myself and I respect her but I see us both as two separate human beings, is when I honor both of us. But if she's unable to see it that way, there's nothing I can do, except for allow her the space and mourn the relationship, frankly, mourn what could be.
Lantigua: Yeah. Sometimes it's about accepting the limitations that our parents have at the moment and continuing to make the best choices for ourselves and continuing to leave room for them at some point down the line to be able to meet us where we're at, but that we are not responsible for their growth.
Soler Cox: Oh yeah. That is huge, because we are made to feel responsible.
Lantigua: Yes.
Soler Cox: I call it the invisible umbilical cord. When you're Latino, it never gets sniped, the metaphorical one, it stays alive. Then I'm conflicted because I have two kids and I see how I'm trying to keep that umbilical cord alive as well. I have to constantly be checking myself, but it's very hard when it's a belief system, because we don't question what we believe to be true, we just believe it to be true. But that's when we can decide, perhaps, to do something different.
Lantigua: Denise, please, please come back. You are such a gift.
Soler Cox: I would love to. Oh, likewise.
Lantigua: All right, here's what we learned from Denise today.
Lantigua: Make key distinctions, recognize the different values you and your family bring to the table, like self-reliance versus prioritizing the collective. Doing so will help you understand the dynamics at play and will also make it easier to address conflict in a productive way. Avoid loaded language. Words like selfishness, betrayal, these can be used to make us feel guilty and overburdened. Notice when these words are being used and avoid carelessly using them yourself. Remember, resist the zero sum game. Self-determination is not selfishness. Self-determination is not selfishness. Repeat after me, self-determination is not selfishness. Good decisions for you do not come at the expense of other people, especially your family members.
Lantigua: Thank you, thank you, thank you, for listening and for sharing with us. How to Talk to Mami and Papi About Anything is an original production of LWC Studios. Virginia Lora is the show's producer, Kojin Tashiro is our mixer, Manuela Bedoya is our marketing lead. I'm the creator and host, Juleyka Lantigua. On Twitter and Instagram, we're @talktomamipapi Bye, everybody. Same place next week.
Lantigua: Thank you for listening and for sharing us. How To Talk To [Mamí and Papí] about Anything, is an original production of LWC Studios. Virginia Lora is the show's producer. Kojin Tashiro is our mixer. Manuela Bedoya is our marketing lead. I'm the creator, Juleyka Lantigua. On Twitter and Instagram, we're @talktomamipapi. Bye, everybody. Same place next week.
CITATION:
Lantigua, Juleyka, host. “ Yearning for Independence, But Unable to Tell Parents”
How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] about Anything,
LWC Studios., June 6, 2022. TalkToMamiPapi.com.