Antonia Soto Autobiography

On March 16, 1999, Jose and Antonia Soto welcomed their baby girl, whom they named Jenny, into the world. She was the youngest of three; her brother Samuel was eleven years old when she was born and her sister Elizabeth was fourteen years old. Despite the significant age gaps between her and her siblings, Jenny was raised in a traditional Mexican household. She, like many Mexican children, had her face shoved into her birthday cake every year and had to greet every family member with a peck on the cheek at every family gathering. It wasn’t until elementary school when I realized that my childhood, my life, was nowhere near traditional. Walking into my kindergarten class, I had no idea that it would be the last time I shared a classroom with people with similar beliefs and backgrounds as me. I had no idea that my intelligence would separate me from my friends and from my culture. In fifth grade, I was one out of four Hispanic children in my class. By then, I got used to people asking me if I’d say something in Spanish for them, acting as if I was an alien from outer space. I remember always declining their requests due to my embarrassment because by this time, most of my friends were white and I felt the need to fit in. I remember telling them that I had light skin because my family was

It was the first time that I was happy to see unfamiliar faces because that meant that no one knew who I was; I could be anyone that I wanted to be. I could be myself. I found a new group of friends where instead of hiding my race, I embraced it. I wasn’t afraid of singing to Latin pop with the window’s down as I was driving around with my friends. I wasn’t afraid of what my friend’s were going to think when they noticed that my parents have an accent. I wasn’t afraid to speak Spanish to my mom whenever she called me or whenever my friends were around. I wasn’t afraid to be myself and that to me, was