Interview Excerpt - Living with a Spanish Background

The following excerpt is from an interview performed by Brodie Ford and Charlie L. on me (Ashton Larkin). I am a current freshman at NC State University, and I come from a Spanish background. My mother lived in Granada, Spain for about 20 years (she was born there) before moving to the United States and marrying my father, who is an American. The following questions talk about how I feel to have this background, and also the experiences I have had because of it.

“What do you like the most about having a Spanish background?”

“Probably the food I eat at my house. My mom always cooks some really good food. We eat a lot of pork, fish, and tortilla (which is kind of like Spanish pizza; it’s made out of potatoes and eggs) … so that’s pretty good. I also like the later schedule because I myself am not very hungry in the morning, so I just eat later. That is just something I have grown accustomed to … so for me, eating early is kind of weird for me although that is something common here in America.”

“Have you experienced any advantages or disadvantages by coming from a Spanish background?”

“I have definitely experienced more advantages than disadvantages. When it comes to things like applying for jobs, I always can put down that I am bilingual. For school applications, I can put down that I belong to the Hispanic race, which gives me a minority advantage. Overall, I would say that the fact that I have that Spanish background along with being confident or comfortable in the American economy and society in which I live in right now is an advantage just because I am able to succeed here in the United States, but I can also hold my own whenever I do visit Spain. I was actually able to do that this past semester; I didn’t even go to school but I lived there for two months on my own.”

“Did you take the semester off in order to do that?”

“Yes, I lived on the island of Palma which is near Barcelona. I definitely picked up on a lot of stuff over there. “

“So when you visit family in Spain, does anybody over there give you a hard time for living in the United States for so long?”

“Not really. I haven’t seen my mom’s side of the family in a long time. But I remember going back over there to see my mom’s mom when we were younger … it wasn’t really much different for her to see us. She kind of just treated us like we always lived there. She would always invite us into the house, and we would stay there with her. She would cook food for us and we would always watch the news in Spanish, go to the parks and stuff like that … when you are a younger kid in Spain, It is kind of typical to have the female parent to be a house cleaning lady if the family doesn’t have a lot of money. So that is what my grandma did (my mom’s mom in this case). Whenever we went to see her, she would be out all day cleaning houses. The kids would always spend the day at the park, so my brother and I always went over there to play soccer. You would see the same kids at the park all the time, so that was a really easy way to make friends over there.”