Julissa Arce has dedicated her career to advocating for immigrants [1] and undocumented people [2] and shining a light on the experience of fighting to "fit in" with American society. Her first two memoirs, "My (Underground) American Dream [3]" and "Someone Like Me [4]," took readers down the long path that immigrants face on their way to the American Dream and what they believe will grant them belonging. Arce's third book, "You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case For Rejecting Assimilation [5]," opens a new chapter in Arce's own immigration story by using history as a lens to view cultural acceptance.
The book touches on the "good immigrant narrative," as well as Chicano and Latinx activism in the US. Chapter by chapter, Arce debunks myths like "the lie of English" and "doing things the right way" with examples from her own life. She also features stories of activists and everyday people who said "no" to the unfair, violent, and racist treatment that Latinxs still experience in this country today.
It's possible we've become desensitized to the true meaning of assimilation, but assimilation is the most extreme form of acculturation. Instead of being an exchange of cultures, it's a domination of one over the other. Assimilation asks Black and brown [7] immigrants and their descendants to make their cultural heritage invisible as a form of acceptance and loyalty. But as Arce and most immigrants have found, in the US, the acceptance and the loyalty is not ever reciprocated. Instead, histories are lost in exchange for second-class citizenship.
"You Sound Like a White Girl" gives the reader a Chicano and Latinx history lesson that includes events like the Annexation of Texas [8], the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo [9], and the Chicano student walkouts [10]. Arce proves that no amount of rule following or doing things "the right way" would give Black [11] and brown immigrants the treatment that white Americans receive. Arce also highlights that Latinxs are not just visitors or bystanders, they've been integral to American society and culture since the border crossed them in 1848.
"I think for me, my biggest source of change came from learning our history in this country. Because there are so many things that I did not know Mexicans had experienced here, so I was kind of blind to the depths of those issues."
"I think for me, my biggest source of change came from learning our history in this country. Because there are so many things that I did not know Mexicans had experienced here, so I was kind of blind to the depths of those issues," Arce says. "I realized that assimilation doesn't make any of those things go away."
Arce recognizes that she's writing from a whole new place because unlearning her own internalized assimilation took time. It's especially evident when looking back at her first memoirs and seeing how far she's come. "When I go back and read my first book ['My Underground American Dream'] there are parts that I think, ugh, that did not age well because of how my own thinking has changed . . . I was still sort of on this assimilation process even though I didn't realize it. I thought I had broken free from that, but it takes a long time to fully let go of your assimilated self," she says.
Now is the time for unlearning. It's time for Latinx communities to stop upholding the values of whiteness and figure out who we really are [12]. "We are creating space for ourselves, and it's going to be messy, and that's why I say in the book that grace has to be a big part of it because we're not gonna get it right the first time," Arce says. "But I am highly encouraged by the fact that there are so many Latinos who are moving away from assimilation, who are moving away from finding value through the white gaze and are saying, 'I don't want to be white.' They're saying, 'I want to be my own thing,' and we're figuring out what that thing is."
Nobody can lie to you about who you are if you know your own history.