{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-article-tsx","path":"/carlospersonalcolumn","result":{"data":{"primeArticle":{"slug":"carlospersonalcolumn","excerpt":"\"There I stood, just as I always have: beautifully brown.\"","headline":"Sandwiches, speeches and solitude","author":"Carlos Gabriel Ramirez","authorbio":"","authoremail":"","authortwitter":"","coverimg":"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/carlospersonalcolumn/solitude-b730465fcb9977045fecfa728fa6da5d.png","covercred":"Megan Wu","coveralt":"Illustration of Carlos looking into a mirror and examining his appearance.","articleType":"article","updated":null,"content":[{"type":"text","value":"Every day for 12 years, I ate the same sandwich."},{"type":"text","value":"Made with the same ingredients, wrapped in the same paper towel and placed in the same plastic bag, the ham, mayonnaise and wheat bread eventually staled in my mouth. My taste buds had forgotten, just as I had, the reason I was eating it."},{"type":"text","value":"So one afternoon in 11th grade, I asked my mom."},{"type":"text","value":"\"Ayo Ma! I swear I appreciate whatever you make me, but why the sandwich every day? Why not mix it up?\""},{"type":"text","value":"\"What?\" she said, staggering. \"You told me to make it for you.\""},{"type":"text","value":"After thousands of sandwiches, I had forgotten it was my own recipe. I knew the sandwich originated during my years at Alice Fong Yu Alternative School – my elementary and middle school – but under sudden scrutiny, my memories were foggy. After leaving the school years ago, it seemed time to finally look back."},{"type":"text","value":"Only, I found more than just a sandwich. Much more."},{"type":"subheading","value":"{\"name\":\"Sandwiches\"}"},{"type":"image","value":"{\"alt\":\"Illustration of a ham sandwich in a Ziploc bag, tamales and pupusas.\",\"url\":\"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/carlospersonalcolumn/sandwiches-e1058dbc1a278292fe0b23c4881d61ca.png\",\"credit\":\"Megan Wu/Daily Bruin\",\"caption\":\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"I remember the car ride to Alice Fong Yu. My family and I would spear through the thick fog, driving higher into San Francisco and away from my neighborhood at the bottom of the city. I would feel my chest tighten, my stomach churning with nausea as we drove over the hills and into the Sunset District. It wasn’t until later that I learned I wasn’t supposed to dread driving to school every day."},{"type":"text","value":"Alice Fong Yu is a Chinese immersion school serving kindergarten through 8th grade. Most of my classmates were East Asian, making me one of the very few Latine students in my class. We began learning Cantonese in kindergarten and Mandarin in sixth grade."},{"type":"text","value":"As a kindergartener, I did not know how to interpret my differences from my classmates. I relished in innocent friendships and sincerely anticipated my peers’ company every day. But what excited me the most about each school day was lunchtime."},{"type":"text","value":"I would race to the cafeteria, eagerly unzipping my hand-me-down lunch bag and pulling out cheesy pupusas, husk-wrapped tamales, steamy casamiento or sopa de frijoles – my favorite. When I saw the dented thermos waiting in my bag, I knew unscrewing its black cap would release the savory aroma of home."},{"type":"text","value":"But some of my classmates did not share my excitement. Even at age five, my heart broke when they called my food \"poo,\" inspired by the brownness of the soup my mother made. My friends’ laughs haunted me, so I begged my mom to change my lunch. I just wanted a simple sandwich."},{"type":"text","value":"As I grew older, I practiced times tables while my classmates called me Mexican, and my teachers guessed I was from Ecuador. I quickly learned not to care to make the correction that I was Salvadorian since my heritage became expendable. And yet, comments about my race followed me into my middle school years."},{"type":"text","value":"My fourth-grade classmates reminded me of my race often, calling me Juan to be funny, exotic to be ostracizing and border-hopper to be insulting. I was mostly indifferent, but when one student called me chocolate – inspired by the dark brownness of my body – my skin prickled. As I grew angry, another classmate began to laugh. I questioned myself: Why did I care about their ridicule?"},{"type":"pull","value":"{\"caption\":\"My heart broke when they called my food ‘poo,’ inspired by the brownness of the soup my mother made.\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"But after I got home and dashed to the bathroom, I broke into tears. Looking in the mirror, I began to pick out what to blame. As I watched the tears fall down my plump cheeks and the snot run from my wide nostrils onto my thick upper lip, I cursed my brownness and dreamt of lighter skin."},{"type":"text","value":"And I carried that resentment with me for a long while."},{"type":"text","value":"Wearing sweaters and pants to cover my arm and leg hair, I hid my growing adolescent abnormalities. I tried to pray away my dark skin as I pinched my nose to make it smaller, strangled my thighs to make them skinnier and sucked in my lips to make them thinner."},{"type":"text","value":"My Spanish speaking skills diminished as I relentlessly studied Cantonese and Mandarin, eager to fit in with my classmates. I subtly, and mostly unknowingly, began to reject Salvadorian food. Devoted to my new lunch, I became known for my signature ham and mayonnaise sandwich. It was my \"thing\" – a sign of my successful assimilation."},{"type":"subheading","value":"{\"name\":\"Speeches\"}"},{"type":"image","value":"{\"alt\":\"Illustration of sneakers on a stage looking out into a crowd.\",\"url\":\"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/carlospersonalcolumn/speeches-347e3ed3e0f8e70f48a9aff7d94d4943.png\",\"credit\":\"Megan Wu/Daily Bruin\",\"caption\":\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"Standing alone on the stage, staring blankly at 150 people and fumbling at a speech I barely knew, I began to realize how meaningless assimilation truly was."},{"type":"text","value":"That fateful speech was the centerpiece of an event celebrating the Chinese exchange program held at Alice Fong Yu. Although the event was an eighth-grade affair, I was chosen as a seventh-grader to give the speech. It was not my first time on stage. Throughout my time at Alice Fong Yu, I wrote campaign speeches for the student government, made announcements in Cantonese and Mandarin and was selected to represent our school at numerous events."},{"type":"text","value":"Despite my teachers’ claims that I possessed exceptional speaking capabilities, I still seemed to perform excessively. Even then, it was obvious that the underlying reason was my race. It was no secret the school saw fit to present me on a pedestal, proudly showing off their successful project: a brown boy who could speak Chinese."},{"type":"text","value":"Nevertheless, I relished the attention. After witnessing the scorn my older brothers received at Alice Fong Yu, I felt tremendous relief in being adored. But I was unaware of how much it would eventually cost me."},{"type":"text","value":"It was on that stage, during that seventh-grade speech, that the pedestal I stood upon came crashing down."},{"type":"pull","value":"{\"caption\":\"The school saw fit to present me on a pedestal, proudly showing off their successful project: a brown boy who could speak Chinese.\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"My legs shivered, and I felt frozen as I faced 150 people, none of whom looked anything like me. Even as I stuttered in a language I had spent a single year learning, I blamed myself for my failure, despite the fact I was given a single day to craft the speech. Shame coursed through me as I pulled out a notecard, barely looking at the words I rushed to speak. I held back tears, wondering if the audience’s blank stares held judgment or pity. I wondered if they saw me cursing my circumstance. I wondered if they saw me wishing I wasn’t brown."},{"type":"text","value":"An eerie sensation that my world was deeply flawed followed me through my final year at Alice Fong Yu. I felt uneasy on the last drive down the city to return home. I know now that I was close to uncovering the truth, about to uncap the pain I had bottled up for so long."},{"type":"subheading","value":"{\"name\":\"Solitude\"}"},{"type":"image","value":"{\"alt\":\"Illustration of Carlos looking at a schoolyard under a bright orange sun.\",\"url\":\"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/carlospersonalcolumn/title-162ab85b62614b82d19f36f38a887ab6.png\",\"credit\":\"Megan Wu/Daily Bruin\",\"caption\":\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"My first day of high school started not with a car ride through the city but with a short walk from my house to campus. After nine years at Alice Fong Yu, attending Balboa High School was jarring."},{"type":"text","value":"I immediately noticed an academic advantage after overcoming the rigors of Alice Fong Yu, but something was missing. As one of countless Latine students at Balboa High School, I no longer stood out for my race. The assimilation I had worked so hard to achieve at Alice Fong Yu was no longer necessary or even beneficial to me."},{"type":"text","value":"Thus, I numbly navigated my first year of high school, grappling with the aftermath of the assimilation."},{"type":"text","value":"Drifting between dreary days and dull nights, I walked to school in the morning, meandered through flavorless classes and made the trek straight home. At the time, I had few friends and abandoned my lifelong hobby of reading in favor of the mindless world of YouTube, video games and social media. I lay in bed, perpetually awake, my face illuminated by flickering blue light."},{"type":"text","value":"Although I continued to learn Mandarin in high school, my commitment fell short of the dedication I maintained in middle school. At home, I exclusively spoke English, refusing my dad’s commands to speak in Spanish. When he begged, I avoided his eyes, trying to ignore memories of the Alice Fong Yu stage that flashed in the back of my mind."},{"type":"text","value":"I was terrified of accentuating my differences. After spending all of my life learning four languages, I felt limited to only speaking English. It made sense – after all, I was still eating the same sandwich every day."},{"type":"text","value":"In 10th grade, however, something strange happened: I felt again."},{"type":"text","value":"I walked out of class after going through the motions of another mindless day. Even as the wildfires raged in California, my head remained down and my back continually hunched. My eyes, however, caught something more interesting than the chasms in the sidewalk."},{"type":"pull","value":"{\"caption\":\"In the space between school and home, in a city of thousands, I was alone.\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"I looked up to see that the air was murky with smoke. A red sun shone through the smog, bleeding orange into the clouds. Ash floated down from above like expired rain. My lips shriveled as I took a breath, nearly coughing on the dry air."},{"type":"text","value":"It may have been the taste or maybe the smell, but my chest grew tight as I watched the ash-filled landscape. My skin dried as my eyes watered, and each step I took rang in my hazy head. My bulging backpack, filled with books I rarely read, was weightless compared to my heavy heart."},{"type":"text","value":"In the space between school and home, in a city of thousands, I was alone. I felt so alone. The worlds I knew, built on sandwiches and languages, were falling as I continued the walk home under the bleeding sun."},{"type":"text","value":"When I made it back home, I cried. Under the weight of my crushing memories, my pain broke free. I lay in bed as the bruises and burns of a forgotten past flooded my eyes for the first time in seven years. And I kept crying for years."},{"type":"line","value":"{\"filler\":\"filler\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"Brandishing chipped nail polish and arm hair, I felt the world spinning as my brother drove me over the San Francisco hills. My legs were stiff under the dashboard, my stomach was twisting, and my chest was tightening with each breath as we drew closer. I sat amazed but mostly sorry that I felt dread like this every day when I was young."},{"type":"text","value":"Still, it had been five years, and while the looming red brick building made me want to vomit, it did not seem as tall as it once did. I walked through the gates, readying myself to face Alice Fong Yu."},{"type":"text","value":"But nothing happened."},{"type":"pull","value":"{\"caption\":\"There I stood, just as I always have: beautifully brown.\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"My nerves never dissipated. The walls did not crumble like I had vanquished a great enemy. The bells did not sound to announce the fall of a great evil. The school kept running, students kept talking, teachers kept rushing, and I stood frozen as the day went on."},{"type":"text","value":"But after the car ride home, I felt a rush of pain on my walk to the bathroom. My legs shivered as familiar tears welled in my eyes. In the mirror, I appeared just as I always had. But armed with a wondrous perspective, tempered by trauma, I could finally see what is true."},{"type":"text","value":"There I stood, just as I always have: beautifully brown."},{"type":"text","value":"And new tears fell. I stared at them in wonder as they glided down my bronze cheeks, trailing ablaze with a golden glow and giving me a satisfaction I had never known. My full lips parted, and my mighty nostrils flared as I smiled, finally staring at the savior I had been waiting for."},{"type":"text","value":"It will certainly be a lifelong struggle, but I am ready to begin healing. I am ready to eat, feasting on pupusas so creamy and sopa so savory that they start to repair the severed ties to my heritage."},{"type":"text","value":"I am finally hopeful enough to fight, reclaiming what was taken from me, one mouthful at a time."},{"type":"image","value":"{\"alt\":\"Illustration of Carlos looking into a mirror and examining his appearance.\",\"url\":\"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/carlospersonalcolumn/solitude-b730465fcb9977045fecfa728fa6da5d.png\",\"credit\":\"Megan Wu/Daily Bruin\",\"caption\":\"\"}"}]}},"pageContext":{"term":"winter23","slug":"carlospersonalcolumn"}},"staticQueryHashes":[]}