Interview Transcript

Hall 1

Interview Transcript:

Interviewee: Laura Gonzalez Martinez

Interviewer: Alexandra Hall

Date: 4/23/2011

Location: Vanderbilt University

Time: 6:15PM

Background Information

Interviewer: [Reads Interview Introduction Paragraph] Can you start off by giving me your name?

Laura: My name is Laura Gonzalez Martinez.

Interviewer: Your age?

Laura: I’m 24.

Interviewer:Where were you born?

Laura: I was actually born in Memphis, Tennessee.

Interviewer: Describe for me a bit about your childhood and your childhood experiences.

Laura: Well, I lived in Memphis until I was two, then I moved to Chattanooga. Clearly, we were like the only Hispanics in the area, so to speak. So there was the bubble that was my home, and then there was the rest of the world. That was pretty much my childhood.

Interviewer:What are some of your favorite memories?

Laura: My Mom’s cooking, by far: fried plantains, mashed plantains… I love plantains.

Interviewer: The food definitely.

Laura: Um hmm.

Interviewer: So did you grow up in Memphis? You moved to Chattanooga, you mentioned.

Laura: I grew up in Chattanooga.

Interviewer: What was the setting like at this location?

Laura: Well, no Hispanics really. It was only until recently that a lot of immigrants from Central and South America started moving there, mainly for the carpet factories. I mean, it was mostly white population. Everyone spoke English, no one understood Spanish. I didn’t speak English until I started school. It was very… I don’t know. It was very divided. There was the American culture and there was my bubble at home.

Interviewer: So tell me about your family: Do you have any siblings?

Laura: No, only child.

Interviewer: Tell me about your parents or your grandparents: Where are/were they from?

Laura: Well, interesting situation, as most Hispanic families, everyone comes to live together, right? So the house my parents bought… so supposedly parents were gonna live there, I was gonna live there, and then both of my grandmothers, and then I think my great aunt and uncle from my Father’s side were gonna live all in this house, but on different floors, but my parents divorced. So now it’s just me, my Mother and my Grandmother. I mean, we pretty much have a lot of fun in between us three.

Interviewer:What do your parents do for a living?

Laura: My Father is a Doctor, and my Mother is a medical interpreter, with Hamilton County Hospital.

Interviewer: And your grandparents?

Laura: Nothing. I mean, I only have grandmothers.

Interviewer:Where did the first immigrants in your family live when they arrived in the United States?

Laura: They went straight to Memphis, because my Father… It was for his job basically. My Father moved to Memphis for the hospital. My Mom was given a choice of… I think it was Indiana or Tennessee. And the idea of America that she had was, ‘Oh, Tennessee: Elvis. Let’s go to Tennessee.’ So we just moved there for my Father’s job, then to Chattanooga for my Father’s job.

Interviewer: So what are some of your memories of these individuals (parents and grandparents) when you were a child?

Laura: What are my memories? In what regard?

Interviewer: Just, anything related to culture or when thinking about these people do you have a certain memory or a certain feeling?

Laura: I mean, we just have a blast. We really do. People don’t understand. When I go home it’s like, ‘Oh, you have to spend time with the family. I’m sorry.’ But really it’s like, we just sit around, shoot the breeze, and we just have a ball…usually centered around food. You know. We all understand each other. We all laugh at each other. It’s all fun and games.

Interviewer: Very cool. Do you recall growing up, eating a particular food, just specific memories in your childhood relating to food, language, and music/dance?

Laura: My Grandmother taught me how to dance. So she taught me merengue, salsa, bachata, all of that. So every time we have a get together at my house it would always be, Juan Luis Guerra in the background and all that. Food wise it would always be arroz con habichuela, piñon, empanadas… plantains of any sort. And as far as that goes, language wise, it was always Spanish in my house. I would speak some Spanglish, like when I would get off from school, but I would transition eventually to just Spanish. The closer I got on the car ride, I would speak more Spanish.

Interviewer: Wow. So, when you first began school, what was your level of English like at the time?

Laura: Kindergarten, I would say… just basics from watching Sesame Street. So I knew random words like shoes and colors… well, my right foot was shoe and my left foot was ‘zapato.’ I would have random words like the colors and the days of the week.

Interviewer: So how were you really exposed to the English language growing up?

Laura: Through school. My Mom just spoke to me in Spanish. My Dad would speak to me more in English, but he also spoke Spanish. They figured, at school I’m gonna learn what I need to learn. So, I pretty much just stick to that, with friends and teachers.

Interviewer: How was your first experience attending school? Do you remember your teachers and friends?

Laura: I don’t really. No, I can’t say that I do. But, I still have friends from kindergarten and we still talk, and Facebook, and what not. I can’t say that I remember particularly.

Interviewer: Do you have memories of your time as a younger student? Maybe middle school if not elementary school?

Laura: Yes. You want positive or negative?

Interviewer: Both.

Laura: Well, most of them were negative. I’m not gonna lie. I was always called the Mexican, Speedy Gonzalez, and stuff like that. Often my second grade teacher told me that I would never get anywhere in the world because I spoke Spanish and that held me back. So, I definitely proved her wrong when I got my acceptance letter to Vanderbilt. I went up to her and showed it in her face. But it was just mostly, I think, ignorance. There was a lot of ignorance in that little community. They just didn’t know because there weren’t that many Hispanics around to differentiate.

Interviewer: Did your family move a lot when you were younger?

Laura: No.

Interviewer: Where did you move to when you did?

Laura: I mean… we’ve only moved twice. We moved from Memphis to Chattanooga, then like from one neighborhood to another within Chattanooga. So like, the house that we lived in, we’ve lived there for almost 19-20 years.

Interviewer: How would you describe the community? Was it very diverse?

Laura: No. No it was not. We were able to find a few diverse people, just because of my Father’s profession: So mainly the circle of friends would be other doctors, different specialties, but other doctors. We have… we like to call it the United Nations (in a sense) because this was before… in the 90s before the big Hispanic boom came and migrated here. It was mostly Cubans, Venezuelans, Colombians, Puerto Ricans, Nicaraguans, but that’s about it. So we have that group of friends, because people that my Mom and Dad met when we first moved here. So, we stick together because we were kind of like, one of the first people to brave this new territory type-thing. But other than that, it was just really not diverse. We would have to go to a middle-of-nowhere market ran by an Indian guy to get the imported goods. It was not very diverse in terms of food, and, or understanding of Spanish, or anything like that.

Culture

Interviewer: Let’s continue to talk about culture. What role would you say American culture play in your childhood?

Laura: I feel like there’s like two sides; there’s the American culture and then there’s my Dominican culture. I feel like it was always a tension between… like trying to balance both. I wanna be able to relate to my friends, but I wanna be able to relate to my family. Though, the way I tried to embrace American culture was to learn about it, so I could teach my, kind of to help them transition to the new life essentially.

Interviewer: Do you remember thinking anything specifically about Americans and American society, when you were a kid?

Laura: They’re very weird. It’s all about privacy. Hispanic families don’t really have privacy. It’s all out in the open. I think that was the main thing. My Mom would always threaten me, ‘If you ever, ever say to me… Mom, don’t embarrass me. I am going to stand on top of my car in an apron, and kitchen clothes all dirty with my hair messed up in rollers and everything, and then I’ll really embarrass you.’ You know, stuff like that. So I guess I tried to find the positive of the American culture and focus on that.

Interviewer: How would you describe the role of Dominican culture in your childhood?

Laura: I guess it was more of a… whereas American culture was more of a social thing, I guess Dominican culture was more of the internal, the values you grow up with. So I feel like I have a lot of those kinds of values. Also culture is so centered around food. It’s kind of hard to start talking about the culture without talking about the food and the family. I feel like that is just an essential part of it. Cooking is also. The process of cooking…the family, and going through that whole ordeal of setting up a dinner for, be it for two people or twenty people.

Interviewer: So that leads into our next question, so what type of food did you grow up eating? You mentioned briefly about when you were growing up. And what type of food do you eat now?

Laura: So growing up, I ate a lot of rice and beans, a lot of plantains, and a lot of Dominican style food. My Mom though, she did try a lot, especially when I was younger, she would try to cook American-style food, just to make me feel not out of place. Like Thanksgiving, for example. We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving because we’re not American. So people don’t really understand that, but when I was little, my Mom would cook a little turkey or something just so I wouldn’t feel bad when I would go to school the next day or next week and be like, ‘So, how was your turkey?’ It’s kind of like the Jewish kid at Hanukkah that doesn’t have a Christmas tree. So just stuff like that. Now a days, she still cooks Dominican-style food, but she also just goes for what tastes good really; casseroles, and she won’t touch gravy or anything like that. And I would say that’s pretty much what I cook. I find my plantains, I have my rice and beans, but I also have casseroles and pizza. Pizza and hamburgers, that was like once-a-month type-thing when I was at home. Well, it still is pretty much. She would know if I was sick… she would know if I wasn’t feeling well if she offered me McDonalds and I said, ‘No, thank you.’ So McDonalds and pizza that was a privilege, and we would go out maybe once a month as a treat get a hamburger.

Interviewer: What type of music did you grow up listening to? Did that change?

Laura: Juan Luis Guerra. He was pretty much all I listened too when I was little. I would say… yeah, my iPod right now it’s proportionate to Hispanic music and American style music. Although, now with all the reggaeton and the Pitbull, clearly I’m gonna listen to different types of music than my Mother would. We still listen to a lot of similar-type music.

Interviewer: What role has dance played in your upbringing? Can you expound on the role of dance in the Dominican community?

Laura: Yes. Actually, I was a trained dancer; I took dance classes for 18 years.

Interviewer: Wow.

Laura: You want to focus on the salsa and merengue-type dancing, I assume.

Interviewer: Umm hmm.

Laura: Well, pretty much every time we had a get together in anyone’s house, it was always…the living room was cleared out with the little coffee table and everything, and people would dance until like two or three in the morning. It wasn’t fun if there wasn’t dancing involved at some point in the night. It’s just fun. It’s good exercise, it’s a good release of energy, and I think it just enhances the community feeling. And it’s kind of hard for any Dominican (I feel like) to listen to music and sit still. I think it’s just innate to move to music. And in part, I think it’s the type of music, you know; the beats and what not.

Interviewer: Were you raised practicing a particular religion?

Laura: Umm hmm. Catholicism.

Interviewer: Do you still practice?

Laura: Yes.

Interviewer: What role did this religion play in your childhood?

Laura: Well, because I was Catholic, my Mom sent me to a Catholic private school where diversity was even less than the general population (so to speak). The fact that you’re Catholic in the Bible-belt adds another layer to that diversity factor. It’s just… I don’t know… It was kind of hard because you go to summer camps, and what not, and a lot of people around here are Baptist. And when you’re a kid, you know, kids are the meanest people really, and so they didn’t really understand Catholicism. So they just mocked it instead of try to understand it.

Interviewer: What role does religion play in your life now?

Laura: Me particularly? It’s interesting to go to church and see, because it’s a different diocese. So each diocese has its own set of rules. It’s just weird transitioning to a new diocese. I’m not really familiar with their particular preferences on the way to conduct a mass. I still go to church, I still pray, still say, ‘Ay Dios mio.’

Interviewer: On a scale of 1-10, how connected do you feel to your Dominican roots/Dominican culture?

Laura: 9.

Interviewer: How does Dominican culture impacted you in this stage of your life?

Laura: It’s very important to me because I use it as a way to identify myself. I’m not just Hispanic. I’m Dominican. I feel like it adds a different perspective (in a sense). I don’t know how to word it.

Interviewer: Just a way of identifying?

Laura: Yeah.

Interviewer: How would you describe the Dominican American community in the U.S.? Do you feel that there is a prevalence of these communities? Do they tend to stick together or spread out?

Laura: Yeah. They tend to stick together a lot. I mean, when you think of Dominican American, you automatically think New York and Florida, just because those are hubs in general. But particularly in Chattanooga, there’s actually a Dominican family. I’m talking about a huge family, like 50 some-odd people, like one branch of the family that moved to Chattanooga, and they have just kept on multiplying. They are really, really tight knit. You find random people all over Chattanooga, ‘Oh, do you know the Linares?’ ‘Yeah, which one do you know? Do you know Freddy, or...?’ Everyone knows them because they’re such a tight knit community within that area. You gotta stick together.

Interviewer: That’s great. Do you seek to find a community of Dominican Americans to identify with?

Laura: No not really. I would find other Latinos to identify with. I don’t think it has to be specifically Dominican, but just anyone that wasn’t born or raised purely American. Just because of that diverse perspective that they bring. They kind of understand having to come into a new setting and adapt.

Identity

Interviewer: Alright now, the meat of the interview: questions about identity. So for these questions you can just answer with one word, with a long sentence, with multiple sentences… however you want to answer them. When people ask you the question, “What are you,” how do you respond?

Laura: Dominican.

Interviewer: Has the way you describe yourself changed over the years?

Laura: Yes. When I was younger, I just didn’t know what to call myself because I saw that I blended in with my friends, but at the same time… I identified with my Mother and my Father, and I didn’t quite know how to mesh that together. Then I went through a phase where like, ‘I’m gonna get a Dominican passport.’ So right now, I’m a U.S. Citizen, but that doesn’t mean I’m American. Now I’m leaning more towards Dominican, not as hardcore as, ‘I’m a U.S. Citizen.’ I still think that American is… I guess, not the correct term to use because American can refer to… well, America itself refers to North and South America, so I guess that’s just a politically correctness on my part. I don’t like to use the word ‘American.’ I say, ‘Yeah. I’m a U.S. Citizen, bylaw, but at heart I’m Dominican.’

Interviewer: How do you identify yourself ethnically?

Laura: Hispanic or Latino.

Interviewer: And racially?

Laura: White.

Interviewer: What is your nationality?

Laura: U.S. Citizen.

Interviewer: Do you identify with one particular culture more than another? What is that culture?

Laura: No. I identify with each culture on different… for different things. It’s a total mesh.