Creating Spaces to Celebrate our Identities: Hispanic Heritage Month (A Reflection)
And so it begins….
Every year, from September 15 to October 15, the United States celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month as a way to recognize all the multiple contributions made to this country. It’s a month of recognition, acknowledgment and gratitude. It’s a great opportunity to show love and appreciate to the culture that brings so much fortitude to the fabric of this country.
Every year, around the schools in the USA, I see celebrations happening. Some of them are rooted in values, stories, multiple identities and a celebration of ancestry. Other celebrations (prior to Covid-19) involved people bringing food and students were encouraged to wear a typical dress to represent their country.
I want to talk about some of these practices and the superficiality and lack of depth to this kind of celebrations.
Yes, Hispanics are proud of their food. Our food carries stories and those stories are shared at the table, during the sobremesa: the art of lingering conversations. Our food honor the land and the farmers that cultivate our crops. It honors our ancestors as recipes are shared from generation to generation. If the celebrations at schools don’t include these level of depths, conversations and learning, then all you are doing is checking a box for Hispanic Heritage Month and staying at the most superficial level of knowledge and understanding. Those kinds of school celebrations water down our culture and minimized it to nothing.
Yes, Hispanics are proud of the beautiful traditional clothing. Our clothes and their vibrant colors tell a story and they honor the many wonderful humans that work on weaving those magical threads. There is meaning behind symbols. And those symbols carry the history of a country. If students are just parading with their traditional clothes without a chance of sharing the how and the why, then again, school systems are minimizing our ways of being to the most basic level without a deep understanding behind those designs or creations.
I invite schools, leaders, teachers and administration to rethink the way we are honoring not just Hispanic Heritage Month but all the different heritages celebrated throughout the year. We are more than the sum of our food and clothes. We are storytellers. We are past and present. We carry the meaning of the world and the respect for the land in our hearts. We are our ancestors’ dreams come true. Invite your students to share their stories all year long. Invite your students to bring artifacts that tell parts of their identities. Nudge students to share about their circle of love at home. This is the best way to honor us…by holding spaces for us to show all parts of our linguistic and cultural identities all year long.
Photo credit via UnSplash.
