Hey, I'm Alicia Menendez. This is Latina to Latina. Each week we talk with Latinos on the rise.

Today I'm in New York with Janelle Martinez, an Afro-Latina who saw a void and created something to fill it.

Five years later, we all know the work that is Ain't I Latina.

Hey, Janelle, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you so much for having me. My first question's a deep one.

You ready? Okay. How early in your life did you recognize your difference?

I recognize my difference definitely around school age, and that difference was mainly in a racial context.

And a lot of the vocabulary I use now, like this is something that I've been learning

through academia and through my own exploration. But the one thing I recognize early on with the

difference in terms of racial was the fact that I had a Spanish last name, Martinez,

and I am a black woman and at the time a black girl. So I remember being asked,

many children are asked in the first day of school, like, hey, introduce yourself to your classmates.

And having the experience of another Latino, actually he was, his family was from Spain.

And when it came down for us at our table to introduce ourselves and I introduced myself,

he was asking me about like my identity.

And I had never at that time had to think so thoroughly about it because I grew up in a home

where Spanish wasn't as prevalent,

but I heard my father speaking it and my grandparents.

My family identifies as Garifuna from Honduras.

So yes, we are from Honduras, but we speak a different language.

But we're still Latino.

And that time when he questioned my identity, and I was like, well, I'm Spanish. And he was like, no, you're not. And, like, back and forth was happening. It's also so New York that instead of being like, I'm Latina, you're like, I'm Spanish. Right. Which at this time, like, to be honest, in 2018, if someone called me Spanish or I hear that, I'm like, what the F are you saying?

Because it's like Spanish is a language.

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