Most of the schools I'm applying to ask for some variation on a diversity statement (what can you add to the diversity of our student body)... So, having been told by several friends that sending in a 3x5 card that says meixcan/german/mormon was unacceptable, I wrote this. Thought you'd all enjoy :-)
Mormons are big on family history. It’s right up there next to sobriety and food storage. So, not surprisingly, as an undergraduate at Brigham Young University, I decided to take a genealogy class. The first day, we introduced ourselves and semester goals. One by one my classmates shared their ambitions to learn more about pioneer ancestors who settled towns in Utah or Idaho. With a healthy sense of humor and self-acceptance, I stood and confessed, “I’d really just like to trace my father’s family back to legitimate births.”
There are a couple pockets of pioneer ancestry tucked into my lineage, but for the most part, it’s a far cry from quilts and covered wagons. I only really know one grandparent on either side, and their stories dominate my sense of culture and identity. Grandpa (on my dad’s side) was orphaned in Mexico at the age of eight. The son of a revolutionary bandit, he crossed the border illegally during the Depression and labored as a migrant working well into his 70s. On the other side, Grandma left Hamburg after her father refused to swear Nazi allegiance; she didn’t return for 50 years. My father once asked me how I would describe our family dynamic, and I replied with a laugh, “Well, Germans are always right. And Mexicans are never wrong…” Culture, like family, is complicated.
As an adult, I’ve come to appreciate that the inheritance from my grandparents includes cultural tensions along side curly hair and dark eyes. Both grandparents fought to create a new life and a new identity in a new country. My parents’ decision to marry across ethnic and socio-economic boundaries—let alone to embrace a new religion—adds its own layers of cultural and familial alienation. For my five siblings and me, culture is not manifest as much in conscious ethnic traditions (we have few, if any, of those), as in the subtle nuances of everyday life.
On field study in rural Mexico, I discovered surprising familiarity. The song my father always hummed to us as babies was sung by village mothers—apparently, a traditional Mexican lullaby. I recognized instinctually so many of the mannerisms and tonalities of daily conversation. And cuisine that was foreign to the other students was comfort food that I craved.
A month into the experience, my paternal grandmother died. The intensity of grief was disorienting; we’d only met once a decade before. But alone in a courtyard not far from the mercado, my tears spilled involuntarily. Under the shadow of an Aztec mural and an ancient cathedral, I mourned as much for my grandmother as for a part of myself I had just begun to discover. Culture, like family, is complicated.
In contrast to my fairly diverse high school in Arizona, BYU and Provo, Utah amplified both community and isolation. Studying with professors and students who shared my faith and academic passion offered a unique kinship. And yet, my complexion and surname stood out as they never had before. There were twice as many Gonzalezes listed among the 2,000 students in my high school yearbook as among the 30,000 in the university directory. More than one well-meaning classmate assumed I was an international student, and one even complimented my English. Conversely, the first-year Spanish TA couldn’t quite figure out why my accent was perfect, but vocabulary and grammar were atrocious. Working in the multicultural office or attending a Latin club event, I often felt as out of place as anywhere.
It’s not a sense of disadvantage or alienation I carry away from experiences like those, however; it is an appreciation for complexity. Too often we prefer line drawings to multi-textured tapestries. My personal experiences give evidence that complication, paradox and even contradiction can give root to discovery, not just conflict. But then again, as a first-generation “Germican,” I did grow up watching my dad make braunswager burritos. What can I say? Family, like culture, is complicated.
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