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When My Little Sister Mistakes Selena for Selena Gomez


I whip around so fast she gets whiplash. No sister
of mine will confuse Selena with Selena Gomez.
I say Se-len-a slow and enunciate the Spanish
because when you say Selena in Spanish every
Tejana knows you're praying to the Queen of Tejano.
La Reina de Cumbia. Patron saint of red lipstick,
pizza, bombass bustiers, purple jumpsuits,
and washing machine hips. A name untouched
by the American tongue. She's the patron saint
of Latinas everywhere: a light embossed into memory
that we can be something more in this borderland
of tongues. On this American soil so quick to tie
our names down to English—because don't you know
Selena Gomez was named after Selena. America just
turned her name into something it could pronounce.

- Amanda Galvan Huynh (from Up the Staircase Quarterly)






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