Spanish or Hispanic or Latino, oh my!

A meeting of academic minds is so fun because, if the academics are your friends, you'll discuss interesting issues comfortably and in non-PC terms. This is great for me because I'm growing incapable of political correctness. One of our great conversations started when Courtney told us that last week she discussed with her students the problem with using the word bitch because of its misogynist overtones (kinda like using the word gay as a substitute for anything bad), and together she and I decided we'd call things dickish instead of bitchy to really put guys in their places.

But the truth is, I love the word bitch almost as much as fuck, and use it in about every other class period (not with the freshmen--I'm not insane), along with the word pansy, which is a habit I've got to get rid of because pansy is just as offensive as gay. Though political correctness is no fun, I certainly don't want to offend the gay community or women or blacks or Hispanics or Asians or Native Americans or the handicapped. But white men, especially those with the conservative tinge who do their damnedest to make sure this litany of folks aren't equal to themselves (how will the world know I'm better and more deserving of a life if everyone has health care?), yeah, they are straight up dicks. I like the sound of that.

At one point someone brought up the question of which was the preferred term for brown people like me who speak Spanish: Hispanics, or Latinos? (My personal favorite happens to be Chicano, but I'm pretty sure that term is reserved for those of Mexican origin. And I know damn well better than to call myself that, as my Lala is the proprietor of the phrase, "I not a Mexican!") Now here's the real embarrassing thing: I didn't have an answer to that question.

In an effort to answer the question now, I've pulled from the freshman composition student playbook and consulted Dictionary.com and, what do you know, the words Hispanic and Latino are 100% synonymous. It's purely a matter of preference. I feel I remember Lala using the word Hispana when I was growing up, but more often she referred to us as Ecuadorianas, which if you're counting is five syllables long. It's fucking hard to say with a mueca lengua like mine. (Loose translation: I've got a messed up tongue when it comes to speaking Spanish.)

Once in college I referred to myself as Spanish because I thought, hey, it's the language I speak, and hey, this is the universal name for Brown. (This was the late 90s and despite my frequent habit of being full of shit what I'm saying is actually true.) At the time I was trying to skip out of a few introductory Spanish language classes because I was about fifteen years past conjugating verbs. On the first day of class the Colombian teacher asked if anyone wanted to test out of the course and I raised my hand.

She asked, "Who are you?" and I said, "Brooke."

She said I wasn't funny and I knew for the next two years I was fucked. Sra. Colomer was the only Spanish instructor in the school, and when she asked a question she expected a certain type of answer. At this point she had no interest in my name--she wanted to know who the fuck I thought I was for trying to test out of her all-important Spanish 101.

So I tried again: "I'm Spanish."

She smiled tiny and her teeth looked thick (the only thing that scares me more than thick teeth is impossibly small mini-M&M-sized teeth...eww!). She said, "Do not say you are Spanish. Are you from Spain?" Why wait for the answer when you already know it? "Listen," she continued, "don't say that because you sound like you just got off the boat."

This was in front of a class of forty-five strangers. I wanted to strangle her and quit school and walk the ninety miles back to New Orleans. Instead I said, "Oh, my grandmother speaks Spanish and she taught it to me. She's from Ecuador. She arrived here forty years ago. On a plane."

According to Lala, Ecuadorians and Columbians traditionally hate each other, but not as much as both groups hate Hondurans, who we're pretty sure don't bathe and are labotomized at birth.

The truth is I don't know if any of this is real. I go through life with a set of beliefs--hatred among these South American countries just one of them--many of which were instilled by Lala who 10 out of 10 psychologists have deemed near-out-of-mind nutzo. She once argued with my mother that the moon was bigger than the sun because, "Look at it! It's bigger!" She's also convinced she's seen two of my four sisters having sex at my mom's house and described the incidents in vivid details, claiming one sister made the lucky guy scream so hard she must have teeth in her vagina. (For the record, my sisters no longer live in the house--she imagines and believes the scene in her mind completely.)

She transcends Hispanicness or Latinaness, she's a helluva lot more than an Ecuadoriana. Lala is some strange engine of love and wonder. After thirty years I still don't get her, still don't know how to deal with her. Between my mom and I we've called her a crazy bitch (lovingly, of course) more times than I'm will to admit to Courtney.

Lala has said and done a lot, so much that I'm scared to finish writing a book about it. Tonight's the night I call her and find out what's happened in her mind during the last week. Maybe she's talked to my grandfather again, now dead nineteen years. If you stay tuned I'll find a way to tell you all about it.