Hola, mi hermanos y hermanas! If you weren’t aware, it’s Latino Heritage Month and, on Sept. 28, our very own Raices Latino Pride will host Philadelphia’s official Latino Pride Celebration, “Orgulla.” The event consists of two parts: a daytime “La Palabra,” a free event with a tremendous showcase of talent; and an evening party, “Dame Mas,” with music, dancing and live performances. This week, PGN spoke with one of the organizers, Nicole López, who also works with LGBT youth at GALAEI: A Latin@ Social Justice Organization.
PGN: I see you have a 386 area code. Are you originally from Florida? NL: Yes, I grew up in Daytona Beach. My family moved there from Puerto Rico when I was a baby. [Laughs.] We didn’t move to Miami or New York or any other place that would’ve been ideal for a family of Latinos; no, we chose Daytona. It’s kind of like living in the Deep South but with a beach.
PGN: So are you into racecar driving? NL: No, but I went once and I see what the fuss is all about. It was very exciting.
PGN: What were you into as a kid? NL: I was a big book nerd, so I was super-big into writing stories and reading books. I would also pretend that I was a pop diva. I was really into theater and the arts. That was my outlet when I lived in Daytona.
PGN: Do you remember your favorite book as a kid? NL: I have two. One was called “The Wump World,” and it was about these little creatures that kind of look like groundhogs. Looking back as an adult, I can see that the book was about environmentalism. The little Wump creatures were living on their own in a sort of paradise when a race of humanoids named the Pollutians land on their planet, causing the Wumps to flee to underground caves. They colonize the planet and build big cities, pollute the air and water and plow down forests and grasslands. After they destroy everything, they leave to find a new planet. Eventually, the Wump people come out from underground and see that their world has been destroyed. The book ends when one of the Wumps finds a single flower growing between the cracks of a sidewalk. I guess the take-away message is that, after destruction, there’s always hope. That was the kind of thing that I would read as a kid and I think it made me a hopeless romantic/activist. I always believe that change could happen. My other favorite book was called “The Hidden House.” I remember that the pictures were really gorgeous. The book was about an old carpenter who had these dolls that he created to be his companions. One day, he leaves the house and never comes back. Eventually, a new family moves into the house and they decide to keep the dolls. Again, a book about despair that turns into something that ends happily ever after!
PGN: Did you read books in English or in Spanish? NL: I like to say I grew up with Spanglish. It’s funny, my mother didn’t even know that I could read in Spanish until I was about 7. We were in Puerto Rico and I was watching the news on TV and you know how they have the captions at the bottom of the screen? I was reading what it said to my mother and my aunt and they suddenly realized that I was reading the Spanish. They didn’t know I could until that point.
PGN: Do you have any siblings? NL: I have two significantly older brothers and a younger half-brother. All boys except for me!
PGN: What do your parents do? NL: My mother is an education specialist for Head Start, a pre-K program that also offers social services for low-income families. She was a Head Start teacher for about 12 years until she moved into an administrative role. My father is a military vet.
PGN: A fun family memory from Puerto Rico? NL: There was a woman who lived on my grandmother’s block who had a little candy store on her front porch. She sold limber, which is kind of a popsicle but they come in little cups with different flavors like coconut and strawberry. They’re just delicious. I remember going to her house and yelling, “Doña!” which is what we would call her. “We want dulce, Doña!” Great memories.
PGN: What was your craziest adventure there as an adult? NL: When I finally got to visit El Yunque, the rainforest. That was a really cool experience, swimming in a waterfall. You forget that places like that actually exist in the world. Especially since so many parts of Puerto Rico are developed and industrialized. San Juan is such a big city, you forget that Puerto Rico is a tropical island.
PGN: So back to Daytona and your life there. Were you part of any clubs or extracurricular activities in high school? NL: Oh yeah, I was in a lot of clubs. I was a very geeky kid. I tried to involve myself in school as much as possible so I was in theater, I was in the National Honor Society and I was also very much into sports. I played varsity basketball and softball for some time.
PGN: And you still perform now, correct? I understand you do spoken-word. NL: Yes, but not as much as I used to. I went to Bryn Mawr College, which is how I ended up in this area. I did a lot of performance work in school but now I mostly just write for myself. I find poetry helps me process a lot about what I’m feeling — life, art, what’s going on in the world.
PGN: What’s the heaviest subject matter that you’ve tackled? NL: I wrote a poem called “Sobre Vivir,” which means to survive. It’s about my mother, and I basically chronicle her story from her birth to where she’s at now. That was very intense because I’m so close to my mother and also because I was telling someone else’s story, writing and performing her herstory for everyone else to see. She grew up in Puerto Rico during a time when there were some very horrific political practices coming from the U.S., forced sterilization, etc. Then I wrote another poem based on my experiences at the Hetrick-Martin Institute in New York, which is where the Harvey Milk School is located, one of the only LGBT high schools in the country. I wrote about young people I met there and the pressures they face with home and school, homelessness, suicide, etc.
PGN: Let’s jump to a few random questions. What was the first video you remember seeing on MTV? NL: Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up.”
PGN: Something that you have from your childhood. NL: I have a doll called Sara that I got when I was 3 and, though I’ve had to have it re-stuffed a few times, I still have it.
PGN: Three items on your bucket list? NL: See the Grand Canyon, do more world traveling and sky dive— though I have such an intense fear of heights, I don’t think that’s going to happen.
PGN: What do you wish you had a picture of? NL: I kind of wish I had a picture of the shoreline of Daytona Beach. I had some good memories there.
PGN: Going back to the family story, how did you end up in Daytona? NL: Good question! I asked my mother the same thing because there were no Latino families there. Why not New York or Miami? We moved there because my mother’s brother went to college at Embry-Riddle; it was the only aeronautic school around. He lived in a one-bedroom apartment and we all moved in there and camped out in the living room.
PGN: So if there weren’t a lot of Latino families there, did you face racism? NL: Definitely! We lived surrounded by Confederate flags and I would have people ask me where in Mexico was Puerto Rico located. We look very diverse in my family; my brothers are darker-skinned and my mother and I are lighter- complected. At school, I hung around mostly with the African-American kids because, although they knew I wasn’t black, I wasn’t white either. I was something cool they could be down with. But since the white kids didn’t quite figure out what I was, I would hear horrific things about race that they would say in front of me. Jokes about Mexicans and other racist things that they would say, not knowing that I was Latino.
PGN: I know that story! Being mixed-race, people say things in front of me all the time until I whip out the family pictures. By the way, when did you come out? NL: I came out when I was about 16 or 17. I came out twice to my mother; the first time I didn’t come out all the way and say it, I just kind of gave some hints like, “Mom, I’m thinking that I’m feeling something towards girls.” She just played it off saying, “I think you just care about people a lot” or “Don’t worry, it’ll pass.” We came from the Pentecostal Church, so I really didn’t want to press the issue. I remember she also said, “It’s because your father never really hugged you.” That was my first coming-out. The second time was much more explosive. It was a few months later and I was supposed to go on a school trip. I spent the night before at a friend’s house — it was a girl I had a crush on. My cell phone died and I overslept so I missed the trip. The school called my mother and she went ballistic. When I finally got my cell phone on, I had about 15 messages from her. I rushed home and my mother was there gritting her teeth, it was the scariest moment of my life. I know she was mostly just worried for me, but she started yelling, “You’ve been hanging out with that girl! You’re missing school! I don’t like what’s going on!” It turned into a whole dramatic thing, which was mostly my fault because I was a dramatic teenager. I called my brothers — one was living in California at the time, and came out to them and they were both super, super supportive and acted as a liaison between me and my mother. [Laughs.] I’d planned on waiting till I got to college to come out, but it didn’t happen that way.
PGN: So tell me what you do now. NL: I work at GALAEI. We’re a queer Latino social-justice organization. We essentially provide social and health services for the LGBTQ and Latino community in Philadelphia and serve as a bridge between those two communities. We like to say that we are Latino in not who we serve, but how we serve. I work directly with young people, I do one-on-one coaching and counseling. I also coordinate a couple of the youth programs, including a youth leadership and advocacy board.
PGN: What is a story that moved you there? Tell me one of those flowers-shining-through-the-cracks moments. NL: [Laughs.] I see what you’re doing, Suzi! You’re trying to get me emotional! OK, I would say watching one of the young people who I counseled here for about a year-and-a-half graduate from high school. It was really, really cool because her story was typical of a problem child from North Philadelphia who grew up in a rough neighborhood, got pregnant at a very young age and all those social ills that befall so many young people. When she graduated, I was sobbing, she was crying. It was beautiful to see her achieve something that she never thought would be a reality. It showed me that she found a place in her life where she believed in herself. It was very powerful and awesome.
PGN: What do young people face now that we didn’t face? NL: I think for many kids, sexuality and gender is much more fluid than it was for most adults. They’re navigating their sexuality without any labels. So I think there’s a struggle trying to figure out where they fit in. For them it may be, “TToday I’m dating a person of this gender, tomorrow it may be something different, so where does that leave me?” And there’s still the struggle of trying to come out. You may have a supportive mom or family, but then you’re getting bullied at school, or you may be accepted by your peers but you’re not accepted by your family or your community. Add to that the overabundance of information — social media, television, the Internet — there’s so much information out there, how do you process it all? Where do you go just to talk to somebody about everything you’ve learned and how to comprehend it all? Where do you go to get correct and accurate information? Just Google gay or lesbian and it’s crazy what might come up. It’s tough to navigate for anyone, never mind a young person trying to figure themselves out.
PGN: There’s a perception in the black community that we are more homophobic than others, though personally I don’t find that. Do you find the same thing in the Latino community? NL: Yes, I think there is a perception that Latinos are homophobic, perhaps because we’re very religious or have different cultural values. I come from a place personally where I don’t find the Latino community any more homophobic than other communities. I think we all deal with the same issues. In my case, my immediate family — mother, brothers and uncles and cousins — are all very supportive of who I am, but I do have family in Puerto Rico who don’t accept me. It’s a mix. What I think needs to happen is more conversation on the issue. I think we need to give our communities the benefit of the doubt. I think given the chance, they may surprise us.
Orgulla festivities kick off at 2 p.m. Sept. 28 at the Mascher Space Co-op at 155 Cecil B. Moore Ave. For more information, visit raiceslatinopride.com.
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