Audelia

The sun shines brightest in the South  

Where Ignacio once sat beneath the steady log,

Where the tortillas and laughter are always warm,

A welcome untouched by storm.

 

It took me nearly two decades to find the shape of my name

Ni de aquí ni de allá –

So where do I begin, and where does it end?

I was as lost as they wanted me to be,

Taught to think I was nothing.

But how could I be nothing,

When I come from them?

 

Filling the air with steady momentum,

The birds sing a wiser tune

I know who I am now –

 Broken free from the northern cocoon,

Not transformed, but revealed.

 

Now I lean into their presence for strength.

Audelia and Ignacio, my love’s depth.

I am not someone new, no –

I travel in their wavelength,

Whole.

 

*Ignacio and Audelia: author’s grandparents, ni de aquí ni de allá: neither from here nor from there, tortillas: a thin, circular unleavened flatbread

 

 

 

Picture by Eduardo Verdugo for the LA Times

Growing up between two cultures can feel like a gift, when we don't look too closely. But for many first-generation Mexican Americans, it becomes a quiet ache, a rootless drift. You’re told you’re too much of one thing, never enough of the other. You don’t quite belong here, nor there.

What’s to blame? Assimilation. A force that smooths out edges, silences tongues, and demands the erasure of stories that don’t fit its mold. In the United States—especially now—there is little space to carry culture without fear of being policed, dismissed, or punished, both in the shadows and in daylight.

But here’s the truth: you are not lost. You are being pulled—misaligned—by a system that was never built with your full self in mind. So I urge you: lean into your ancestral wisdom. Let it ground you, let it guide you. You are allowed to take up space—in your voice, in your language, in your lineage. That too is resistance. That too is power.