Questions to Ask a Latina
Questions for getting to know one woman properly rather than asking her to explain a whole continent. They start with the ordinary things people rarely bother to ask, and move toward family, language, what she is tired of being asked, and what she would rather you understood.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Where is your family from, and how do you usually answer that when people ask?
Why ask it
The second half matters more than the first. Most Latinas have a short answer for strangers and a longer one for people they trust, and asking which one you are getting is a more respectful way in than demanding the long version straight away.
Do you say Latina, Hispanic, Latine, or just your country?
Why ask it
These words are not interchangeable and people have real preferences between them, often tied to generation, region and politics. Using the word she uses is a small thing that saves a hundred small corrections later.
How does your family say your full name?
Why ask it
Plenty of women have spent their whole working lives answering to a flattened version of their own name. Asking for the family pronunciation, and then using it, is one of the few gestures in this list that costs nothing and is noticed immediately.
What language do you speak at home, and which one do you count in?
Why ask it
Counting, swearing and dreaming tend to stay in the first language even when everything else has moved. It is a more interesting question than are you fluent, and it does not turn into a test.
What is the dish that means home, and who makes it best?
Why ask it
Every family has a version and an argument about whose is right. Ask who taught whom, whether she can make it, and what is impossible to get where she lives now.
Who came here first in your family, and what do you know about it?
Why ask it
Ask this as an invitation, not a demand, and let a short answer stand. Some families tell this story constantly and some have never told it at all, and which one she grew up in shapes a great deal.
Which holidays does your family do properly, and what does properly mean?
Why ask it
The interesting part is the specifics: who hosts, what has to be cooked, what time people actually arrive, and which relative controls the music. Answers here vary enormously between countries and between families in the same country.
Who do you call first when something happens?
Why ask it
This maps the family more accurately than a list of relatives does. Ask who gets told immediately, who gets told a week later, and who never gets told, because that third category is where the real dynamics are.
What did your parents expect from you that your friends' parents did not?
Why ask it
Answers often involve staying close to home, contributing money, translating, minding siblings, or a very short list of acceptable careers. Ask what she negotiated and what she simply complied with.
What music was on in the house when you were growing up?
Why ask it
This gets a warmer and more specific answer than asking what music she likes now, because it is really a question about her parents. Ask what she was embarrassed by then and plays on purpose now.
Do you talk differently depending on who you are with?
Why ask it
Code-switching is constant for a lot of bilingual people and rarely discussed with anyone outside it. Ask what changes: vocabulary, volume, accent, how much of the family she mentions at work.
What do people assume about you in the first thirty seconds?
Why ask it
The assumptions vary wildly by how she looks, her name and her accent, and they are usually not the ones an outsider would guess. Let her list them without adding your own commentary.
What is the question you are tired of being asked?
Why ask it
Asking this early enough saves you from asking it yourself later. The common answers are about where she is really from, immigration status, and whether she can teach someone Spanish over dinner.
Is there part of the culture or language you lost and want back?
Why ask it
Second and third generation answers are often about Spanish specifically, and there is real grief in it that gets treated as a joke. Ask whether anyone in the family made a decision about it, and why.
What do people get wrong about your country in particular?
Why ask it
This is the antidote to being treated as a representative of twenty countries at once. Expect corrections about food, accent, race, geography and which words mean something completely different where she is from.
What does your family do when someone brings a partner home?
Why ask it
Ask what actually happens: who asks the questions, what gets cooked, whether the whole extended family appears, and what the person is being assessed on. This is practical information you will want long before you need it.
What was it like being the only one in the room?
Why ask it
Most Latinas can name the classroom, the office or the town where this was true. Ask what she did with it rather than only how it felt, since the strategies are the part nobody hears about.
Where do you feel most like yourself?
Why ask it
The answer might be a country, a kitchen, a language or a specific group of friends. It is a gentler way of asking about belonging than asking where home is, which for a lot of people is a genuinely painful question.
What do you want your children to keep, if you have them?
Why ask it
This makes someone choose, and the choosing is revealing: the language, the food, the closeness to family, the religion, the Sunday habit. Ask what she would let go without regret, which is the harder half.
What do you wish people understood without you having to explain it?
Why ask it
Explaining is exhausting and mostly invisible work. Asking directly hands the frame back to her, and whatever comes out is more useful than anything else on this list.
How to ask these well
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
One person, not a category
Ask about her country, not the region
Latin America is more than twenty countries with different histories, foods, accents, racial politics and slang. A question that starts with what do Latinas think will get a polite answer and end the honest part of the conversation.
Do not make her the translator
Asking someone to explain their whole culture, correct your pronunciation, or teach you Spanish over dinner turns a conversation into unpaid work. Ask about her life and let the culture arrive through it.
Leave immigration status alone
Do not ask whether she or her family are documented, and do not ask it sideways either. If she chooses to tell you, that is her decision, and the fact that she made it is the point.
Follow-ups that work
- Who taught you that, rather than how do people do that
- What is it called where your family is from, when a word comes up
- Was that the same for your cousins, which opens up the wider family without an interrogation
- What did you do about it, after any story about being singled out
- Say more, and then say nothing, which is the most underused follow-up in any conversation
Lines that land badly
- You do not look Latina, or you do not have an accent, both of which are heard as a verdict
- Say something in Spanish, which turns a person into a performance
- Comparing her to a celebrity or a character as a way of complimenting her
- Anything about being fiery, spicy or exotic, including as a joke
- Asking her to settle an argument you are having about her country
- Treating a story about her family's arrival as entertainment rather than as something she chose to tell you