Dear Professor Sidibe-Leyva,

As stated on my birth certificate, my name is Diana Whittaker. I was born June 17th, 1998, in Brooklyn, though I have lived in between Brooklyn and Queens my whole life. For all intents and purposes, the name that truly belongs to me is Ray, and as such, my name is Ray Whittaker. I’m twenty years old and currently living in Newark, New Jersey, while going to school and work in New York.

As mentioned before, I have lived between Brooklyn and Queens my entire life – whether I was living in my grandmother’s house with my mom, or in the same tiny apartment for 9 years, I have lived in or around an area called Ridgewood, which is quite literally the border of the two boroughs. I was raised by my single mother until I was 16 years old, at which point, due to some emotional turmoil with her, I moved in with my father and have been living with him since. My mother is a Dominican immigrant (my father is a Panamanian immigrant), so while I was born in the United States, I find I am most closely associated with Dominican culture, dialect, and values, though I want to learn more about my own Panamanian culture including going to Panama and understanding what it means to be an Afro-Latin person.

As you already know, I don’t identify with the gender I was assigned at birth; I am nonbinary, which means I am neither a woman nor a man. I go by they/them pronouns and introduce myself as Ray to everyone I meet with the intent of straying away from the gender associated with my birth name. It’s more comfortable for me as a trans person to have a name that better suits who I am and how I feel about myself, even if the name I take is not a nickname that has any relation to my birth name. I only discovered this part of my personality after moving from my mother’s house – the Dominican values, especially in femininity, were rooted a lot more in being effeminate physically and submissive emotionally, which made it hard for me to realize my identity because of expectations I thought I was supposed to fulfill. My father, however, was more open to me exploring myself, and as such I was able to realize who I was. While I may not know too much about the Panamanian side of my culture, I have noted, from my other family members, that they are less rigid about what role a person is meant to meet.

Through all of this, I, as a writer, want nothing more than to see myself in media and in writing – media portrayals of people who are nonbinary typically create this unchanging archetype: a thin (typically white) person who looks androgynous. I fit none of these boxes, and I want other people who don’t fit these boxes to know that I understand how hard it is to be nonbinary, where the prevailing assumption is that if you don’t look androgynous (which mostly means vaguely masculine) then you are not nonbinary enough. I want this to especially be true for people who are hispanic because of how gendered the Spanish language and culture can be.

My goal as a writer in this class is to learn how to really articulate how I experience being nonbinary, black, and hispanic in the hopes of reaching out to others who feel similar to I do. It’s difficult being marginalized, and falling into multiple marginalized groups is something like being put into smaller and smaller boxes with less people who you can relate to on that front. Of course, people need individuality above all else, but it’s my sincere belief that even in suffering, it’s easier to bear when others can go further and empathize with each other’s plights. Most of all, I want to help people be themselves to their fullest extent.

 

Sincerely,

Diana (Ray) Whittaker