Something really interesting and I think really relatable to a lot of people that you write about is growing up “feeling like [you] had to hide being half Mexican,” as you didn’t feel Latina enough to fit in at school, and simultaneously felt like you stuck out when you were with your immediate family, because you looked different than they did. You’ve also spoken about how reconciling your feelings with this is “the next chapter of your life.” What has that looked like for you so far, and what is your relationship with your heritage like now?
I feel like in the past, you know, I just hadn’t always been comfortable talking about my Latin heritage, and not because I’m embarrassed or ashamed. Literally, quite the opposite. I’m so proud to be Mexican, but I just kind of felt, like, a bit of imposter syndrome. I know one of the main reasons [why] was my dad, the man who raised me. He’s Dutch, blonde hair, blue eyes, and my mom has blonde hair, green eyes. My Latin heritage comes from my biological father’s side, who was always in my life, but more kind of from a distance. That’s not who raised me.
I didn’t grow up in a household speaking Spanish, which I wish I did. I wish my daughter did. But I never wanted my dad to feel like he wasn’t enough, or he wasn’t, you know, my real dad, because that’s my dad, that’s who raised me. So I kind of hid that part of my life. And, you know, not being raised with, like I said, the language, the culture, I just felt like I didn’t fit in. I felt like I couldn’t tell people that I was Mexican because my last name was Jancan, and my parents are white, so [people] weren’t going to understand that.
But yeah, going back to the imposter syndrome, I feel like that’s just something I’ve struggled with. I never want to be seen as just taking advantage of the positive parts of this community — you know, like this opportunity before me right now — while not having to deal with the challenges that this community faces in America. What we are going through right now is so crazy.
I literally try to always stay out of politics, because I’m always afraid of saying the wrong thing. If you listen to my podcast, you know I do say little, but I feel like the challenges and racism that the Latin community faces, especially in the heightened more recent times, with everything with ICE, it’s not even a political issue at this point. It’s a human issue. I have heard so many stories of people just being ripped apart from their families, and it’s not okay. People being targeted because of their skin color, their language, the music they listen to, their job…it’s just…it’s all wrong.
Like the backlash of Bad Bunny doing the Super Bowl? Straight up racist. It’s not okay. I said this on my podcast last week — the Super Bowl is global, and music is universal. That could, like, be one of the biggest Super Bowl halftime shows ever. He’s so iconic. I saw him at SNL for the 50-year anniversary, and [he was] so good.
But I do feel like just finally opening up to the world about my family and putting this all in the book, I feel like I finally have a bit of permission to further explore my cultural identity, and I really do want to lean into that more. I tell my daughter she’s Mexican and she’s Polynesian. We’re trying to teach her about the culture, which she doesn’t completely understand yet, because she just knows her Nani and her Opa. She’s meeting, though, her Hispanic cousins, we spend a lot of time with them in Vegas.
And one day, I think she’s going to ask, like, “Wait, so whose side of the family are they on?” because she doesn’t yet realize there’s a third side of the family — your cousins, your uncles, your tíos…but we spent some time with my Hispanic family in Vegas this past weekend, and she got to be there with them. So it’s always nice when we can get together and just feel like a family.
