Aside from my education, my family is the most important aspect of my life. My family is everything to me and my life has always been family-oriented. While I grew up, my family would eat together, go to the movies together, and would squeeze on the couch to watch television together. However, unfortunately, when I turned fourteen years old, my family suffered a few setbacks which has changed our family dynamic drastically. My family consists of my mom, step-dad, sister, and brother. Both my parents (including my biological father) are from Guatemala. While my mom has been fortunate to have had the opportunity have had papers, my step-dad did not. Although marriage could have changed this dilemma, my step-dad and mom did not get married until after my step-dad got deported. His deportation caused a strain in my family, and things have not been the same since.

After my step-dad’s deportation, my family endured a lot of hardships. During this time, my mom had to take over my step-dad’s position of the head of the household. As my step-dad was in Guatemala figuring out ways to come back to the United States, my family transitioned from a heteropatriarchy to a “woman family,” similar to what Lorna Dee Cervantes refers to in her poem, “Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway,” even though my brother has been a part of the family. My mom became what the women in Cervantes’s poem ended up becoming within the Chicano, or Latino, family. My mom had no choice but to take on the traditional male role in the traditional Latino family. By taking over my step-dad’s duties, my mother was able to eliminate the machismo embedded in “la familia,” while my step-dad was away, and my family was no longer a heteropatriarchy.

Since my family spent twelve years without my step-dad in the picture, he literally has not been in in the picture, or pictures. The pictures I specifically chose to include in my collage do not have any trace of my step-dad. However, I do not know whether I did this subconsciously or not; yet, I actually do not have many photos of my complete family. I believe that I probably did this as a way to demonstrate how comfortable I have become with having my mom be the head of the household in my family. In fact, the only males seen in the photos that make up my collage are my brother and grandfather. Consequently, these males do not exert the kind of machismo that Richard Rodriguez asserts in his text, Next of Kin, which conditions men as dominant and women as submissive. In other words, my family ends up contradiction Rodriguez’s description of the traditional and appropriate family structure. Thus, my family could be seen as being “anti-familia” since my mom is able to have a voice of her own in my family without a man undervaluing her.

Although my family is not traditional, based on the criteria that the nuclear Chicano family exemplifies, my family is traditional in terms of our Guatemalan culture. Expressing and discussing my cultural roots is extremely important to me because, unfortunately, my skin color does not emphasize my true ethnicity. As my photos demonstrate, I have a light complexion, and even though not all Latinos are dark, I still feel ashamed that my outer appearance does not show my Latina roots. For this reason, a photo of Antigua Guatemala (shown on the lower left-hand corner) is included in my collage. I decided to not include a picture of the Guatemalan flag because Guatemala is more than its flag. Guatemala is such a beautiful country, and so, I wanted to display its beauty by adding a photo of one of its well-known features.

Compared to the Mexican culture, the Guatemalan culture does not have too many traditions. Nevertheless, my family still embraces the culture. In fact, my mom has always made Guatemalan dishes and we have always celebrated the holidays in the Guatemalan fashion. This includes having traditional Guatemalan tamales on Christmas Eve. This tradition is what I look forward to all year long, which is why I added a meme photo (shown on the upper right-hand corner) joking about eating too many tamales. Consequently, I realized after posting my collage that this very picture expresses one of the many stereotypes against Latinos regarding eating a lot of tamales. Not only does the picture pokes fun, but it does it in an offensive way by having a Caucasian girl demonstrating this joke/stereotype visually. Although this meme is not the kind of stereotype Rodriguez’s discusses in his text, it still fulfills the Latino stereotype due to it being offensive in light of it being simply a joke. Regardless, my intention was to demonstrate my humor, which I share along with my family.

Overall, I appreciate my family, and I embrace my culture and my familial traditions. Even though my family would not fit the “la familia” mold, it is still an example of a Latino family, only a modern one. I am glad I was able to grow up in a family where a woman is the superior one as opposed to a man because, now, I have better expectations of the kind of family I wish to have in the future.