A letter from Oct 19th, 2021

Dear FutureMe, Hello!!!!! You’re probably going through some crisis now as you usually do so I just want to start by saying that you will be fine and you’ll get through whatever it is that is making your life hell this time! Anyways, I don’t know if you even remember having to write this but I was SOOOO stressed about this paper, only to find out it would be graded on completion! So yeah, don’t freak out over every little thing….but you’re older and I’m sure you know this by now. Also how does it feel like to be in your 20s? As you very well know, I’m currently having a quarter life crisis because I turn 20 next year, even though I still won’t be 19 for another month. Ha! Does Gabriel have his license yet? Also fun but not so fun historical fact: I’m writing this in Butler 303 on the day of the quad fire….I hope they figure that out soon…. Now onto the actual assignment. As of right now, I think I am very sure as to where I stand in regards to my identity. As a young, Black, African-American and Puerto Rican woman, I have always felt the looming presence of all of these different facets of who I am, and have always benignly understood how these identities have compounded how I engage with certain communities and how they engage with me. Despite the various intersections in my identity, the two axes that impact my life the most are race and gender, being a Black woman. It’s really interesting because I am always aware of these identities in every interaction that I have, but I am most conscious of my Black woman-ness, not when I am in a class full of white people or in microaggressive interactions with white people, but rather around Latinos. Despite the fact that there are so many Black people in Puerto Rico and in the rest of Latin America, I feel hyper aware of my Blackness when I am around family and at club meetings such as CU Boricuas and Mujeres, and I feel like an outsider in my own community (remember those first meetings?). I hope that by the time you read this you feel more secure in your Latinidad (and that the next CU Boricua meetings go much better than the first one). Please tell me you talked to Butler Boy you pathetic heaux. Love, Daniela