Growing Up Latino
Fall 2002
What’s it
like to grow up Latino/a in the United States around the turn of the millennium,
a time when Latinos/as are the nation’s largest and fastest growing minority?
How are Latino/a youth experiencing the US education system—high school and
college? How has their sense of personal and community identity changed by
attending a college like Tufts, whose student body, like the US population at
large, is becoming increasingly diverse? How has the presence of Latinos in the
U.S. changed how other minority groups perceive themselves? What does it mean to
be Latino/a, anyway?
Students in Growing
Up Latino/a engaged these questions in two ways: first, by interviewing
other Latino/a students at Tufts and comparing their stories to their own
experiences; and second, for their final projects, they learned how to create
multi-media “digital stories” based on their own life histories and their
experiences of “growing up Latino/a.”
These stories reveal a great deal about how complicated—and sometimes
confusing—the process of self-definition in a multi-cultural society can be.
They are also inspiring, because they demonstrate that reflecting on the
process of coming to terms with one’s personal identity can, in fact,
stimulate a sense of belonging and personal empowerment.