¡Ay, Mija!: My Bilingual Summer in Mexico and Revealing My Identity to Others and Myself

I shaved my head in 2020. It was something I’d always wanted to do but was afraid of how I’d be perceived as a queer woman in Texas. Come to think of it, I wasn’t so sure about how I felt about the word “woman” either. So, I changed the pronouns in my Twitter bio. Nobody followed me anyway, what was the harm?

(Feeling Seen in Fiction: The Connection Between Readers, Writers, and Getting Lost in a Good Story)

I texted my best friend often, the only person from high school I keep in touch with and who happens to be transmasc. We talked about gender, our upbringing, religion, and how it kind of makes sense that it’s all led to here. I had a few terrifying conversations with my cis straight husband and watched with bated breath as he learned my pronouns.

Amongst all this change, I had a giant project staring me in the face: writing my first graphic novel, a memoir about visiting Mexico in my teens. In 2009, I was so deep in the closet that I didn’t even know I was in it. I hadn’t even heard of the word “nonbinary.” I had a sneaking suspicion I was gay but clung to the fact that I’d had a couple of boyfriends with the unique desperation of someone who is totally straight, don’t even worry about it.

And to really play on hard mode, I was growing up in the Piney Woods of East Texas*, a place so conservative, the one out gay kid in our high school would get beat up about once a year. These were the days of gay as a slur. This is what I was writing about.

I remember the day I changed my pronouns in the script; the first draft had been sent a few months back. I reread my work and each time I ran into a “she” or “her” in my script, I carefully changed them. I felt powerful, like I was looking back into that time when I felt so weird and different and being able to tell my younger self, “There’s a name for what you’re feeling” or “Try these pronouns instead.” It was healing.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with a script for a graphic novel, it has a few different parts. First, there’s the description of what’s going on in the panel. Example: “Christine smiles as they look out the car window.” That was simple enough to change. But I paused when I got to the dialogue.

I didn’t even know what nonbinary meant back then—how could I expect the characters in this book to suddenly acknowledge me with new pronouns? To my family, I was always a girl.

It got even more confusing when I got to the Spanish, a notoriously gendered language. Heck, even the title of the book laughed in my face. Mija. Girl. Incorrect.

I hadn’t come out to my parents yet. And I balked at the idea of explaining gender and queerness to my Catholic grandparents in a language I am still not fluent in after all these years. I realized there was yet another barrier between us.

I was worried about my grandfather. His health was declining. Writing this book was a way of grieving that even when I do finally go back to Mexico to visit, it won’t be the same. We can’t run around the city until our feet ache. We can’t climb pyramids or explore markets or hike up mountains. And now I had to face the fact that the next time I go, it will be as the wrong gender.

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My book is dedicated to the strong Mexican women who raised me: my mom and my aunt. The Ventura sisters. And though at first, I felt strange to be leaving the category of woman, the one that bonded us as family, I realized that all the things that made us Venturas—the laughing too loud, the squawking noise we make when startled, the affinity for cats, the deep and complex love for a country you don’t even live in—was still there, even if I was no longer a woman.

I left the dialogue as is. I wanted to be true to my story. Even the little hints of queerness I’d placed in the book were probably too much for my prudish high-school self. I could have never admitted an attraction to women back then. The updated script was just for me, an artifact of my growth.

As I imagine most authors do on the sleepless nights before a book debuts, I think of my title often. ¡Ay, Mija! “Oh, my girl.” Or more accurately, my daughter. A thing said to me so lovingly, even when there was a hint of exasperation behind it. It still fits, even now.

My mom stumbles over my pronouns and corrects herself when she calls me a girl. But I won’t correct her if she does it in Spanish.

*For a humorous yet strangely accurate look at East Texas culture, try the movie Bernie, featuring Jack Black. The lone escalator in my hometown gets a shoutout.

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