Diana Aguilar Robles

Diana Aguilar Robles (she/hers) is a first generation senior at UNCA. She is Mexican-American and was born in Winston-Salem, NC. Diana transferred from Forsyth Technical Community College and graduated with an associates degree in fine arts in visual arts. She is pursuing a Bachelor’s in new media and a minor in creative writing. 

In terms of race/ethnicity: “I was always surrounded by my culture growing up, from being surrounded by my family, speaking Spanish at home, and even traveling to Mexico as a child. Regardless, my mother tried her best to assimilate to American culture such as watching cartoons with me to learn English and even taking courses to obtain her GED. Growing up, I loved to read books. I have fond memories of my mom taking me to the library on the weekends and getting huge stacks of books. My mother, who was still struggling with her English at the time, would read to me. There would be parts in the book that she couldn’t understand which would lead her to make some parts up. But I could never tell.

My parents are from the state of Guerrero where the majority of the Afro-Latine population resides. From my maternal side, my grandfather is black and my grandmother is indigenous, on my paternal side it is vice-versa. The mixture of races caused me to be confused about my own racial identity which I continue to struggle with. I remember taking those final exams in school where they asked to bubble in what your race was. I would always leave them blank since I believed that none of them pertained to me. When I recently learned about my indigenous roots, my mother made it clear to me that I cannot identify as indigenous since I am distant. The same rules applied to identifying as black since I wasn’t completely black. It was made clear to me that I wasn’t enough to consider myself one thing or the other, causing me to be stuck in the middle. Despite this, I continue to learn more about my lineage and my identity in an attempt to  break away from being confined to one box."