narratives

Multiplying Identity 
Learning how to curse and count in English on the road to assimilation

by Danny Sepulveda

My name is Daniel Alejandro Sep”lveda Aldana. I am the eldest son of Jose Alejandro Sep”lveda Mu”oz and Maria Fabiola Aldana. My father was the son of a politician and my mother the daughter of a strong single mother. Both of my parents were born and raised in Chile, a long and narrow South American country pinned between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean.

My father, a man of exceptional intellect, came to the U.S. for his graduate studies in the early 1970s. My mom accompanied him and I was born in Pittsburgh in 1972. We returned to Chile the following year, but stayed for only six years. My father was hired to teach engineering at his alma mater, Pitt University, and brought us back with him. I have a black and white photograph from when we arrived. It’s just of my brother, my sister, my mom and me. My mom calls it our refugee picture because everyone is so serious in it.

Pittsburgh proved difficult and we moved to Winter Park, Fla., in 1980 where my father began teaching at the University of Central Florida. My mother had not really wanted to come north and my father had assured her we would live in the U.S. for only five years. He still teaches at UCF. We never went back to Chile for good, though my parents went for a year in 1990 and again for a year in 1998.

It was in Winter Park that I went from being Daniel Alejandro Sep”lveda Aldana to becoming Danny Sepulveda without the accent mark over the "u" and eventually without much trace of an accent in my speech. Yes, I am one thoroughly assimilated Latino. I do not dance cumbia and I am significantly more familiar with American history than with Chilean history. I actually majored in American history in college. I admit my relative, though not complete, ignorance of Chilean history with neither pride nor shame. It’s just how things worked out.

It took me about four months to learn basic English and about a year before I could really cuss someone out. To this day though, it’s hard for me to make "sh" and "ch" sounds. Particularly if those sounds are back to back. When I was a kid, I would call other kids "chicken shit" and it would come out "shicken chit."

I remember little about the first year or two in the U.S. other than that I was nervous and confused and way too angry for such a little kid. Nine times out of 10 I had no idea what other kids were saying to me and I probably traded blows with one or two for asking me to pass the ketchup or something at lunch.

I also remember being made aware of the sacrifice my parents had made to bring us to the U.S. Though my father has mellowed in his later years, he was an intense guy when I was a kid. When we moved to Florida, I was in the middle of my third grade year in school. But the third grade in Pittsburgh was far behind the third grade in Winter Park and I had no idea what multiplication tables were, while my fellow students were working on their sevens and eights already.

My father must have received notice that I was behind because when we moved into our house, he told me that I would not be allowed to swim in the pool until I caught up with my class. I remember the discussion clearly. We stood in our front yard under a palm tree that seemed big to me then. It couldn’t have been that big though because it was only slightly taller than my father who is 5 feet 7 inches tall. Nonetheless, he looked huge to me back then also and even today, though I stand around 6 feet and weigh a buck eighty, he can scare me with just a look. I think his father was the same way. Tradition.

Anyway, I remember looking up at him as he laid down the law. No pool until I knew all my multiplication tables through 10. And to help me learn, he gave me a little talking Texas Instruments calculator. He also pointed out that my mother and he had sacrificed friends and time with family to come here so that I could receive a strong education and pursue anything I wanted to be. I could be a doctor, lawyer, journalist, politician, anything I wanted. I think that at the time I just wanted to go swimming.

I remember staring out the window at our pool, holding that little calculator, and listening to its annoying voice say 8×7 is 56, 8×8 is 64, and so on. Eventually I just memorized the numbers. I had no idea that if you had eight boxes with seven oranges in each, then you had 56 oranges all together. All I knew and kept hearing in my head was that little calculator saying 8×7 is 56.

Danny Sepulveda lives in Washington, D.C., and has worked in government, non-profits and the private sector. He writes for fun.

Related Sites
- Transformations: The Post-Immigrant Generation in an Age of Diversity - a study on children of immigrants that includes information on immigrant families, expectations of achievement and visions of identity
- Racism, ethnicity and television by John D.H. Downing, from the Museum of Broadcast Communications
- In 1998, the Washington Post ran a series on "The Myth of the Melting Pot." Here is a story on immigrants shunning assimilation