Julissa Arce’s “You Sound Like a White Girl” and How to Love (and Label) Yourself as a Brown Person in 2022
Julissa Arce is the best-selling author of My Underground American Dream: My True Story as an Undocumented Immigrant Who Became a Wall Street Executive (Center Street, 2017) and Someone Like Me (Little Brown & Company, 2018), a young reader memoir. Her latest book, a polemic manifesto, You Sound Like a White Girl: A Case for Rejecting Assimilation (Flatiron Books, 2022) launched on March 22, 2022. Deeply informed and well-researched, Arce tackles huge issues such as affirmative action, the massacre in El Paso, Texas, and the erasure of Latinx history in the United States. Split into two parts, “Part One: The Lies We’re Told” and “Part Two: Embracing Our Truth” uncover the deception that with success (financial, linguistic, etc.) people of color will be accepted by the white power structure.
In a recent interview with Arce shortly before the release of the book, I asked her what made this book different from her first two. She said, “You Sound Like a White Girl… is much more of a cultural criticism on how immigrants are asked to assimilate into whiteness, and how that doesn't ever offer us belonging. When I wrote my first book, I remember thinking: I'm writing this book to change the narrative of how this country views immigrants. What I didn't realize then was that I was writing a book with white people in my head. Like, look at my story. Look how much I went through. And I'm still here, right?” Instead of Arce’s imagined audience, it was actually others who experienced similar circumstances that resonated with her work. Arce explains, “There's definitely been a shift in my thinking and in my work. I don't want to change the narrative for other people anymore. I'm not trying to convince other people to see us as human. I'm really trying to change how we see ourselves and how we think about our place in this country.”
What’s refreshing about Arce’s manifesto is that it is neither prescription, nor litany. It is a crisp snapshot of her ideas about her own identity and no one else’s. In my interview, I asked Arce how she identifies:
“I think people should define themselves however they please. It is not up to me, and it is not up to anybody to define any one label for people. People should literally call themselves whatever they want to call themselves. It's not up to me to say, you should call yourself ‘American.’ Or you should call yourself ‘Latinx.’ Or you know what? Fuck Latinx, we should all just be Latino. That's not up to me. That's not up to any one person. And I think that's part of the problem. I think it's perfectly okay to want to define it for yourself: I am American, I am also Mexican, I am Latina. I am all of those things. I am a woman. I can put those labels on myself. Because I know what those things mean to me.”
This speaks to ongoing debates around labels, in particular inclusive terms like Latinx which reject the gender binary. No matter how you feel about one label or another, Arce cautions against “cancel culture” with regards to Latinidad. In our interview she shared, “I feel like we are making ourselves disappear. You know, I think all these conversations about how Latinidad should be canceled. We are erasing ourselves. We are erasing our own community. And that doesn't mean that there's no work to be done within the community.”
Arce doesn’t shy away from naming the work that needs to be done. In her chapter “The Lie of Whiteness,” she calls out the colonial Spanish roots of colorism in Mexico as well as the anti-indigenous sentiment that is inculcated since childhood. She writes, “One of the hypocrisies in Mexico is that we learn to be proud of the mighty Aztecs who built the pyramids, but not of the Indigenous person who has survived all these centuries, who speaks Nahuatl or one of the other sixty-eight Indigenous languages still spoken in Mexico.”
Arce also points out the gaps in American conversations on critical race theory that exclude Latinx thinkers who founded the movement. Arce explained to me how one of the founders of critical race theory is Mexican American law professor Richard Delgado, co-author of Critical Race Theory (2001, NYU Press). She says, “He was one of the four or five people who created this framework. So think about that. One of the founders of this framework that is currently creating so much controversy is Mexican American, but Mexican Americans are never thought of in these discussions and in these conversations. I am keeping my fingers and toes crossed that my book, along with many other books, will be able to break through that barrier.”
Photo Credit: Aly Honoré
Arce is doing more than just promoting her books. She has also been fighting for legislation that would establish a Smithsonian Museum dedicated to Latinx history. Arce explained, “The Smithsonian is tasked with telling the American story, right? So how can you tell the American story where there isn't a museum dedicated to the American Latino story in history?” The National Museum of the American Latino Act finally passed in 2020, but the ongoing fight now is for the museum to be located in a prominent location on the National Mall in Washington D.C. I thought it ironic that on one hand, her book is advocating for rejecting assimilation, but her advocacy work fights for inclusion in the Smithsonian. She answered, “I'm always gonna fight to be included, and it's not the same as wanting the approval of these institutions. That's a different thing. I'm not seeking the approval of these institutions, but I am seeking to be included in those institutions, because it is our right to be included.”
Nominated by Eva Longoria, Julissa Arce was named People En Español's una de las "25 Mujeres más poderosas" del 2022. So now, what comes next for the activist and author? Arce says, “I don't have a clue what I want to write next. But you know, I am working on other ways to tell our stories. I am producing a couple of TV shows, I'm producing a film. I am getting much more in the weeds of the Hollywood producing world.” Such work continues to be essential, especially in light of the recent cancellation of Latinx shows like Gentefied.
Ultimately, this book’s most endearing quality is that it’s not specifically about being undocumented or being an immigrant, but actually, universally about being brown and unloved. In the book, Arce references the film My Family / Mi Familia (1995) and in particular, Guillermo (Memo), the overachieving student-turned-lawyer who changes his name to William. She imagines a future for this character in which he realizes white society will never accept him and he embraces his Mexicaness. We have all been Memo. This book is a love letter to all of us who have been chasing these dreams of being accepted by white society only to find rejection. We can be perfect and it will still not be enough. In the opening pages, Arce writes, “Narrative change strategies have been focused on transforming the way people see us, on convincing white people to view us as human through our stories of pain, success, and trauma. But now I know the choir needs energizing, needs love, needs to feel seen, heard, and understood. I am glad other people are doing the work to change hearts and minds. But my work focuses on changing how we see ourselves. On empowering us, both in our feelings and in our actions.” This book is a roadmap to feeling better. It’s a long ugly cry that ends in side-splitting laughter. Arce closes the book with “Last Words” in which she writes, “Having these conversations is difficult, and we likely won’t get it right the first time. But we cannot let fear of perfection keep us from making progress.” This book is a rallying call for us to love ourselves, label ourselves, and go out and do the work. As Arce puts it, “It starts with us. Belonging is about acceptance, and for us, that means accepting our power.”
Salud. To accepting our power.
Yollotl Lopez is the queer daughter of Mexican immigrants. From the Mojave desert of California, she is now a doctoral candidate at New York University. Her work centers on undocumented immigrant youth narratives and the rhetoric of storytelling. She is also an editor, writer and historical costumer, bi-coastally-based in New York and California. Her work has also been featured inTin House and Drizzle Review.