Kevin Gil have grown in a society that constantly tries to define him for how he looks. His passport says that he is American, but he would say, he is Mexican. He’s not white, so when people look at him, they think he’s Mexican, although his Latin family look at him as a gringo.
Tell us about your family?
Well, my parents are Mexicans. They arrived at this country 23 years ago. When I was born, my mother was 19 years old, now I’m 21. They don’t have documents, so the life for them has been difficult. They have to live underground, without people know where you come from.
What kind of difficulties have they faced?
Well, for example they don’t have guarantees at work. My father had a hernia for work 14 hours per day in the heat of a kitchen. Without documents they don’t health care. Sometimes they cannot apply to a mortgage for a car or a house. So, they have to figure out for themselves, just with the work they have. My parents have never bought a house they just rent them; and the same for the car, we don’t have one, so they use the bus for go everywhere. Because of that reason they cannot go back to Mexico to visit their family. And also for me, I have never go to Mexico to visit my family, I know some them thanks to Facebook or FaceTime.
So, with that situation, how was for you to enter the university?
I have the dream to open a restaurant for my father and that’s why I’m studying accounting. When I was in the high school, I had a really good advisor that look foe a kind of scholarship. So, based on my socioeconomic background they gave me the financial aid. I still have to pay a part, but it’s not too much in the comparative of a regular student.
And was your school?
Well, here the big cities as Philadelphia or New York are very diverse, you can find a lot of cultures. Nonetheless I grow up in a small city, so there were not a lot of diversity. I went to a school that was full of Asian people, not even white, it was them and the Latinos.
Did you learn Spanish and English at the same time?
My first language was the Spanish, because my mother never learnt the English. I learnt this language by myself, when I was a kid watching SpongeBob. With my brothers we always speak Spanish, but lately, I don’t know why, we started to speak in English. The truth is that we, the second generation, are destined to leave Spanish. If tomorrow I marry an American woman and she doesn’t know Spanish, then we’re going to teach English to our children, because it’s easier.
I love the Latin culture, but I think that I know I don’t know everything. If I want to go Mexico, then I need to feel more confident with the culture, to fit in. I don’t know anything about what’s going on in Mexico right know.
Do you have an anecdote that tell us how people look at you not as an American but Mexican?
I was working in an Ice cream store. One time someone ask me a coffee with milk, and I did it, but I forgot to add the cream. So, when I gave him the coffee, he was mad and he told me “oh, do you want that I speak you in Mexican?”. Why he had to told me that? I felt so bad and I didn’t want to come back, I just wanted to run away from there.