My Difficult And Wonderful Journey With My Mexican Mother

My relationship with my mother when I was growing was fraught with tension because of what seemed like an enormous cultural chasm. We were never like the “Gilmore Girls,” finishing each other’s sentences with quirky cultural references. In fact, I grew up never seeing a relationship like ours in TV or in film.

My mother grew up in a wooden shack in a remote town in Durango, Mexico; I grew up in a Chicago working class immigrant neighborhood. My mother grew up making tortillas by hand; I grew up watching Alf. My mother was a traditional Mexican woman; I was one of those emo-y teenagers who wore fishnets and combat boots. At one point, I shaved off my pretty Mexican hair and made myself took like a refugee to the horror of my family. I was also communist, feminist, and rejected the Catholic Church. We had misunderstanding upon misunderstanding. It was like “Three’s Company ” but  very Mexican and not as funny.

I was constantly criticizing the patriarchal nature of our culture. In addition, I was completely obsessed with literature and writing and preferred to be left alone most of the time. Needless to say, my mom was probably baffled that she had given birth to such a strange creature. She wanted me to be a sweet and traditional family-oriented Mexican girl, the kind who had a quinceañera– unfortunately, she ended up with me. Here are some of the results:

• She, like many Mexican mothers I have known, didn’t believe in privacy and hovered over me. So, I told her nothing.
• When I was 13, I shaved my very hairy legs because I feared the ridicule of my classmates. (After all, I’m Mexican, and we can sometimes be a hirsute people.) When my mother found out, she was livid.
• When I was 14, I also plucked my eyebrows because I was beginning to look like Bert from Sesame Street. My mother was furious.
• When she found a box of tampons, she was horrified.
• When she found a condom wrapper…well, you can imagine.

As I grew older, I did more things to horrify my mother — I traveled by alone,  I lived in Spain, and I went to grad school in a city 1,300 miles away from home. I did everything by myself. My deep Mexican (and sometimes unreasonable) pride kept me from ever asking anyone for anything. And somewhere along the way, my mother became proud of me. She was impressed by my resilience and independence. She began referring to me as “chingona.”

Perhaps after so many years, my mother just learned to accept me as I was. I was never going to be the kind of Mexican daughter who went to church and lived at home until she got married. Currently, I’m  living in sin with my white boyfriend and when I tell my mother that I don’t want to get married or have kids until my writing career is established (at this point, it’s looking like I’ll be a septuagenarian), she completely agrees with me. When I tell her I’m thinking of moving to Brazil, she says it’s a great idea. When I tell her I’m becoming Buddhist, she says she hopes it  will help me  find some peace.

As I grow older, I better understand where my mother was coming from and how difficult it must have been to have such weird daughter. After all, we grew up in two vastly different worlds. She had to slave away at a factory and come home to raise children who were more influenced by this country than by hers.

It’s troubling that so many Latinas don’t ever see their relationships represented in the mainstream media. All we get are shows like the “Gilmore Girls,” shows in which (mostly) white mothers and daughters share secrets and have heartfelt moments over bowls of ice cream and live next door to Sally Struthers. My mom and I will never be anything like Lorelei and Rory. In fact, we’re probably more like that dorky Korean girl and her terrifying mother. With the luxury of retrospection, however, we  finally found a way to truly respect each other.

Oh Hells Nah is a small and sassy Mexican woman exploring the relationships between poetry, politics, and food. She lives in Chicago, you can check out her blog — like hot dogs for your brain — or follow her on Facebook or Twitter @OhHellsNah.