In respone to Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, and Julia Alvarez:

I, too, sing America,

I am westernized over my Mexican heritage.

I wonder why my school never let me speak my first language when it was the best and most polite way I could respond.

"Dahlia" "Mande, What, I mean what?" "Don't say 'what' say excuse me."

As the days go on I hear my family speak every word of the language I forgot so eloquently when I understand but can't repeat or rebut

I see the traditions that I knew but never had and

I wish I could be who I'm meant to but

I cry because I fear that seventeen years late is overdue.

I hope for you, like me, at the private school, to never lose your lineage as I did because America is built on diversity and

I, too, am obviously American

 

I, too, am the soul of the nation.

I am the protector, the guardian, la angel of the souls who lost what I did.

I feel people's disappointment in me and their lack of belief

"Wow are you really Mexican? You look and dress and sound white and you could totally pass for white!"

I pledge my passions to the lost ones like me and

I help them remember them.

I worry another girl will lose what I lost but

I will contribute my devotion to her and

I will celebrate when she doesn't because I will have hope that maybe one day I'll be able to find it deep inside of me too.

I dream of the day I will find who I am, show it tried and true and people will see me for me because

I, too, am America and tomorrow, next week, and forever, they too will see how beautiful I am.