Meadowdale grad celebrates her heritage

Published 6:57 am Monday, March 3, 2008

Meadowdale High School graduate Amber Simonton carefully splits the narrow green chili down the center. She gently scraps out the seeds and dices the chili into fine pieces. The chili’s juice makes her eyes water and her hands tingle.

She’s making homemade salsa, something she’s never done before.

Simonton, who’s a transfer honors scholarship recipient currently attending Willamette University in Salem, Ore., grew up torn between two worlds – Caucasian and Latino. The senior sociology major is the daughter of Lynnwood resident Diane Simonton, a Caucasian, and Oscar Serrano, a Latino born in El Salvador.

“My dad didn’t teach me Spanish or talk much about growing up in El Salvador. I had little connection to my Latino heritage.”

She recently gathered with other students at the home of admissions counselor, Ramiro Flores, to learn how to make tamales for a university cultural event.

“We grew up eating this food, but none of us know how to make it,” she said. “We tried to make papusas, a traditional food from El Salvador, but they were raw in the middle. When we made enchiladas, we set off the smoke alarm three times.”

Latino ranchera music pulses from a CD player in the next room. Several of the girls sway to the music.

“A lot of immigrants experience discrimination,” said Simonton. “They push their cultural heritage into the background because they think their kids will have an easier time growing up. That’s especially true for kids like me who come from a mixed background.”

When Simonton’s parents separated, her Latino cultural heritage slipped further away. She knew something was missing and her discontent showed. “I was just a frustrated, angry teenager. I couldn’t relate to school. I was lost.”

A trip to Mexico with her dad when she was a high school sophomore began to open the door to her true identity.

“Mexico felt like a homecoming to me,” she says. “I’d never been there before, but I felt connected to the people and to the culture. I realized this was the part of me that I’d been missing.”

She began to embrace her difference at a conference while attending an internship with a group which advocates for multi-racial, multi-ethnic people.

“Coming to Willamette has made everything come together for me – my cultural history, my interest in activism and social justice, my interest in sociology and my unique identity,” she said.