I'm so done with people telling me I'm too American or not American enough.

I'm over purists shitting on blended culture. I'm over foreigners ranting at me about AmericaBad like they look at me and obviously don't see an American. I'm over self-haters trying to rope me into the self-hate train. I'm done with old world and new world fundies invalidating my interpretation of the religion I fucking grew up under. And I'm especially over white people informing me about who I am, regardless of my input.

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Surfer rock and west coast rap. Orange chicken and ranch dressing. Childhood robbed by the extracurricular industrial complex. Poison ivy and chaparral. Spanish named streets and cities. Big box store hellscapes. Converse sneakers and hoodies with those stupid kangaroo pockets. Social satire dubbed over anime. Slinging gas station slushies and cardboard churros on minimum wage. Mistrusting the system.

This is my culture.

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The last Native Americans from this land I stand on, passed on their social values to friends who wrote them down in books that raised me as a child, while my parents where skiving off. The civil rights thinkers who spoke to my reality when no adult in my life treated me like a person. Jaded suburban white hippies who raged against the machine. The old country philosophies that tell me to lift my head against the old country philosophies that compel me to bow and submit.

These are my founding fathers and mothers.

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The furtive world of mostly non-white folks who keep one or two tor ten toes outside of legality, united by the common language of cash under the table. Queer BIPOC kids subconsciously signaling to each other and gravitating together. People who are unafraid to think, unafraid to be sincere, unafraid of the dark, scared of falling asleep, scared of authority, scared of dehumanization.

These are my people.

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When I am condescended to, when my substance is flattened, when supremacists or essentialists dictate to me what I think or feel or know--I will remember what is warm and familiar, I will recall the good and the bad that watered my roots. I will cook my food and sing my songs and care for my people.