Camila Cabello is opening up about her rich heritage in an open letter she shared with fans on social media.
The 25-year-old Cinderella star got candid about how looking for a true, authentic Mexican restaurant to find gorditas led her to an epiphany about that yearning feeling of belonging somewhere, or to some specific group.
Click inside to read Camila’s full letter…
“Today was one of those days where I felt hungry but had no appetite for anything,” Camila started her lengthy letter. “I got in my car and felt like I wanted to listen to music but anything I put on felt like it was going right through me. I looked up where I could get a bite to eat and checked all the usual Postmates orders but nothing looked appetizing (this is very rare for me, I always can pinpoint what I want to eat/ what I’m craving-food is one of the things that brings me the most joy, just like a good film or a great song… and if I’m hungry I usually jump at the idea of a lot of foods.)”
She continued on, saying that she “felt a low level thirst, hunger, desire and yet every option of food or music or activity made me feel weirdly numb. I’ve been in LA for a while now and although it’s been really fun at times, this has never been my home. I finally realized the only thing I was craving.”
“When I looked up ‘gorditas’ on my Yelp and found a place that seemed not touristy and authentically Mexican I felt desperate for it. And I realized it wasn’t just the food I was craving, but the feeling of comfort and familiarity and the feeling of grounded-ness it gave me,” she writes. “It made me think of what I feel like a lot of people who immigrated to the US when they were young (for me it was 7 years old), might feel sometimes.”
“You have this strong sense of culture that you grew up around, but you’re in a different country than that culture, so other than your household, the country you’ve lived in your whole life for some reason never feels like home. You can eat and eat but you don’t feel quite full. I barely eat meat anymore but my heart skips at the thought of carnitas tacos, because it doesn’t feel just like food to me, it feels like my childhood.”
Camila added, “It feels like my Dad. It anchors me to something deeper than me. If I have a long and hard week in LA the first thing I crave is platanitos and croquetas.”
“When I hear people speak Spanish around me, this part of me deep down, feels like it’s more right, like it’s more home, than when I speak English. And yet… I dream in English, I think in English, most of my friends are English speakers. And when I go to a Latin awards show, I feel out of place there too. I feel like I want so badly to sit at a table I don’t belong to as much as everybody else. I feel like my vocabulary isn’t as expansive, my jokes aren’t as witty, my thoughts never as eloquent.”
“I finished reading ‘White Teeth’ by Zadie Smith this week, which made me think a lot about what it’s like being an immigrant,” she wrote. “That constant yearning for a home that is so far away, that can never be your home. That feeling of puzzle pieces fitting together when you hear your language, eat your food, or encounter anything that reminds you of your culture – feeling like those moments are too rare and then feeling out of place when you ARE in the country your family emigrated from, because you can’t fully belong there either.”
“That line that I straddle is a hard one. It feels like a blessing to have access to a rich heritage but also feels like you’re constantly thirsty for something that has always been out of reach. That feeling of yearning to belong,” she mused. “I felt like that since I first walked into an English classroom and kids didn’t say the same name my family gave me, felt like that when I would show up to school telling my American friends about David Bisbal’s latest album and they didn’t get it, felt like that when I went to Cuba and told my cousins about Justin Bieber and it went over their heads. Always searching, always yearning, always somewhere in the middle. Never fully belonging to one place or the other.”
After Camila opened up about that yearning feeling, she ended her letter: “Thankful for these Tlayudas today which fed my soul and gave me some comfort.”
just a thought I wrote down real quick. 🇲🇽🇨🇺 pic.twitter.com/b9ok85Z2tm
— camila (@Camila_Cabello) March 11, 2022
Last week, Camila dropped her brand new single, “Bam Bam”.
via Source
