“She speaks Spanish
but she doesn’t look Latina.’
“‘Oh, she’s exotic.’ They would
say to my agent, ‘So, your
client, you know, the
Latina who looks Black
but speaks Spanish…’I was like,
‘Wait a minute'”
-Selenis Leyva
“I’m a black woman. I am.
Culturally, I would say
African-American culture
is different. I would say I’m
more Afro-Caribbean.
I’m not going to choose.
I’m both.”
-Tatyana Ali
“I’m Cuban, but [people]
didn’t get it because I
was also brown-skinned,
and you usually see a fair-
skinned Latino. Are you
black or white? I didn’t feel
like I had to make a choice.”
-Christina Milian
“I would get really positive
reaction at auditions for
both African-American
and Latino parts. But, I
didn’t look Latino enough
because of the curly hair,
and the freckles, and the
nose and all that stuff.”
-Judy Reyes
“I couldn’t get an audition as a Latina.
People didn’t know what that was, they
just said, ‘Well our vision of a Latina
looks more Mexican, or Central American,
or Spanish.’ And that was an interesting
journey to take and something
that I had to struggle with initially.”
-Lauren Vélez
