The Case Against Assimilation

Talking with the author Julissa Arce about running a race in which the rules are always changing

Julissa Arce attends the Poderistas – The Poder Circle on March 16 in Los Angeles.
Araya Doheny / Getty

Book People—podcast hosts, bookstagrammers, booksellers, and other folks who read advance releases of books for a living—have for months been telling me to read one new book in particular: Julissa Arce’s You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation. And I’m glad I did. It’s a tour de force nonfiction manifesto that rips to shreds the lie that assimilation leads to belonging. In doing so, she explores so many of the themes—the pain of trying to fit a mold or a place that doesn’t want you, the isolation that comes with “American success”—that I had wanted to discuss through the art of fiction in Olga, only with a surgical precision that ignited something in my soul. I loved this book so much!

So much of my own life and my family’s experience have been defined by assimilation—my Spanish skills have been just one casualty. So scared was my grandfather and his family by the discrimination they faced when they came from Puerto Rico, he, like many others, thought we’d be better off with nothing but perfect English. That’s just one example. And because I see assimilation as a sort of cousin to gentrification—particularly my specific obsession: the gentrification of people as well as places—I thought it would be fun to talk to Julissa for the newsletter.

Julissa is the best-selling author of My (Underground) American Dream, which chronicled her time working as an executive at Goldman Sachs while undocumented,  and Someone Like Me, her memoir for young adults. She is the co-founder of the Ascend Educational Fund, a college scholarship and mentorship program for immigrant students regardless of their immigration status. She lives in Los Angeles with her family. Below is our interview, conducted via email; it ranges from Bad Bunny to it being okay to love Gucci, and more.

Wow, so it’s really wild reading your book because it’s like a nonfiction manifesto of so many of the themes and feelings I wanted to express in the “lived” form of Olga and her brother’s lives. I think (and write) a lot about “Gentrification of Self,” this idea that in the quest for self-“betterment” we must push out parts of ourselves, and in the end risk becoming unrecognizable.

Do you think the very notion of “betterment” is itself an internalized attempt to assimilate? How do we reconcile ambition with rejecting assimilation?

Yes! I felt the same reading your book. Olga is living through so many of the themes in You Sound Like a White Girl. I don’t think that "betterment of self" is the same as assimilation. It only becomes synonymous to assimilation when we believe that we will find that improvement in whiteness. For me, bettering myself has meant reconnecting to my roots, turning away from the white gaze, and practicing indigenous healing practices such as meditation.

Part of the mistake I made in the past was viewing ambition and success as possible only in white spaces. I’ve had to reframe what I view as success. As I wrote in the book, we can find all the achievements we want within our community. I offer Bad Bunny as an example: He only sings in Spanish, and his El Último Tour Del Mundo album reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. It was an all-Spanish-language album. Whiteness doesn’t own ambition or success.

You start out with a beautiful metaphor of a Latina running a race where the rules are constantly being changed as she runs it. And she keeps clearing hurdles and exhausting herself in the process. You conclude the story by writing, “No one told me I was entering into a system that never wanted me to begin with.”  

Do you think that they don’t want you—us—or do you think they only want you on their terms? Or do you think that there is a myth of “inclusion” happening as well? In other words, that part of the power of white supremacy is institutions offering up “opportunities” with nearly impossible bars to clear, just to say that they had created the “opportunities”?

The United States has a long history of wanting our land, our culture, our food, but not our people. After the U.S invaded Mexico in the 1840s, the southern border was drawn so that the U.S. acquired the most amount of land with the least amount of Mexicans. This statement about entering into a system that doesn’t want us is about a system, not necessarily individuals.

It’s clear to me that diversity, equity, inclusion efforts are not enough to rectify the harm that has been done to our communities. Too often, these initiatives allow corporations and other white spaces to get a pass, to get praise even—but many times it is just for show, to check a box. If we truly want an equitable world, those opportunities must be truly accessible to everyone, understanding that not everyone has the same starting point.

Brilliantly, you break the book into two sections: the lies we are told, and embracing our truths. One of the lies that I was most intrigued by was the lie of success. “American Success” is defined by financial success, and you write in the book how the accumulation of things snowballs into itself. They are never quite enough. But I also think that for so many young people of color—especially those who have experienced the trauma of poverty—pursuing paths that yield financial stability for one’s self or one’s family feels necessary. How can we reconcile that with the insidious nature of materialism?

I am the first to say that while money doesn’t make you happy, it certainly helps. Having financial stability is still important to me, and something that I hope for every person in my community. For me, it was about recognizing that money doesn’t offer belonging.

The other day I went to a Gucci store because my husband was buying me a purse for my birthday. I thought about how different this moment felt. I wanted this GG Marmont matelassé not because I needed to have the same purse as my colleagues at Goldman, but because I think it’s pretty, and it looks good on me.

To me that’s the difference—we deserve to treat ourselves to be free of debt, to take vacations, to eat at fancy places, if that’s what we’re into. But we should do those things for us, not to try to prove something to anyone.

In the second section of the book, about embracing our truths, you talk about reclaiming our history, particularly as it relates to the United States. Michaela Angela Davis always discusses her family’s migration from the South to the North, accurately, as “when they fled a domestic terror state of Jim Crow.” I always tell people that neither my Mexican side of the family (who were from Brownsville, Texas, btw) nor my Puerto Rican side ever “chose” to immigrate to America. America happened to them. A border was placed in one instance and an island seized in another. I also never call Puerto Rico a “territory.” It is a colony, and we shouldn’t allow that false narrative to persist.  What are other linguistic things, or terms in the conversation about immigration and Latins in America in general, that you want to change?

I was in D.C. on book tour, and I visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture—everyone should visit! It was incredible to see the contributions of Black Americans told in such respectful and beautiful and painful ways. But there was one small plaque that really bothered me. It called the Mexican-American War a "territorial dispute," and that is not what happened. The United States illegally invaded Mexico. As a result, not only did Mexicans lose their land, but the stealing of our land was a precursor for the Civil War—because the question became, would slavery be allowed in this new territory?

I would love for the Mexican-American War to be more than a paragraph in history books, because that event was critical to the creation of this country.

Another is the use of the word "illegal" to describe human beings. We aren’t, have never, will never be illegal. Our immigration status does not speak of our humanity.

Xochitl Gonzalez is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of its newsletter Brooklyn, Everywhere, about class, gentrification, and the American Dream. She is the author of the novel Olga Dies Dreaming and was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.