When I was in first grade I wanted to be a pediatrician. By the time I got to high school, my teachers bet I would become a lawyer and run for office. In college, I decided I wanted to be a journalist, a writer. Truth be told, my fantasy is to be a backup dancer for Beyoncé.
Today, I’m none of those things.
Somehow my story became the quest for belonging --for myself and for others; the quest to define what is home and where is home; the quest for new identities and roots after one has been uprooted; the quest for an answer to this one question: What does it mean to be of a place, to be an American?
You see, not too long ago I crossed an important milestone: I have been here in the U.S. longer than the first 21 years of my life lived in my native Costa Rica. Therefore, I have reflected a lot upon the question of where I —and others like me— belong, only more intensely in the last few years given the prevailing vitriolic rhetoric that reminds us of our otherness every day.
Like the story I saw unfold time after time in the lives of thousands of immigrant families served by Conexión Américas (the organization I co-founded in 2002 and led until May 2019), I know what is like to live in the hyphen: a bi-national existence —living here, visiting there— both physically (if you can) and spiritually (always); a bi-cultural marriage constantly merging and negotiating two worlds; a mixed family raising two bilingual children.
It was 2007 when I finally declared myself a Nashvillian, an American and I applied for US citizenship —exactly 10 years after being eligible. With a citizenship certificate, my hyphenated existence took on a different meaning. In addition to the right to vote, I gained a comforting feeling of fluidity between my two worlds, not in the sense of a quaint multi-ethnic utopia but more an openness to fully claim and be all that I am: That I am from here and there, and that sometimes I do not feel I belong to either place; that I speak English during the day and dream in Spanish at night; that I love the homeland that gave me birth, and taught me to read and dance as much as I hold dear the adopted country that welcomed me, embraced me and allowed me to re-imagine and define a new self.
I did not become the investigative reporter I once wanted to be. But even with my imperfect English, I found a new voice. I became an immigrant rights activist, an advocate for reclaiming the ethos of an immigrant nation that is at odds with its immigrant roots. I have not been writing stories for a newspaper, but through my work during the last two decades, I hope I have helped create a platform through which people can tell their own stories of renewal, risk-taking, displacement, rejection and, hopefully, triumph and belonging in the pursuit of their own version of the American dream.
I'm still chasing mine and starting to write a new chapter.
Renata Soto
Nashville, May 2019