We talked with Denise Soler Cox, a first-generation American-born Latina, founder of Project Eñye about Latinx identity and speaking Spanish.
The ‘enoughness paradigm’, as Denise Soler Cox calls it, is the idea that there are some requirements Latinxs have to fulfill to be ‘Latinx enough’ (a topic that has also come up in conversation with other interviewees of BoldLatina, such as the founders of Latinxs in Gaming). This paradigm, of course, can turn out into a victimizing situation for American-born first, second or third-generation Latinxs who, for whatever reason, don’t speak Spanish. And, as the Pew Research Center has reported, the share of Latinxs who don’t speak Spanish is growing in the US.
As Soler Cox presents it in Being Eñye, the documentary she co-directed with documentarian Henry Ansbacher, this paradigm produces a feeling of being “two people at the same time,” one that is ‘too Latinx’ for white Americans and, at the same time, ‘too American’ for Latin Americans, and that can never completely fit into any of those worlds. Where did she find she could fit in, eventually? Among those other 16 million people in her situation. So, she decided to travel around the country and find them, the ‘eñye’ generation, to collect their shared experiences.
The irony of it all, and what puts Latinxs in this ‘not enough’ paradigm is that, while so many have been shamed for not speaking Spanish, their parents have been shamed for not speaking English. And, actually, that’s the reason these Latinxs don’t speak Spanish in the first place: “They were literally deprived of learning it oftentimes because their parents were trying to protect them from racism,” Soler Cox explains.
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