There is a tax that the first generation pays that no one names at orientation. It shows up in the translation jobs no one assigned you — at the doctor's office, at the bank, at parent-teacher conferences where you became the adult in the room before you were ready. It shows up in the negotiation between who your parents needed you to be and who you were becoming. First generation doesn't mean you're between two cultures. It means you carry both, all the time, whether you asked to or not.
What does "primera generación" mean?
Primera generación — first generation — describes someone who was either born outside the United States and immigrated as a child, or born in the U.S. to parents who were themselves immigrants. In the context of Latino families, the term carries particular weight: the primera generación typically navigates cultural expectations, language barriers, financial pressures, and systemic inequities while also serving as a bridge for parents navigating an unfamiliar country. According to the Pew Research Center, first-generation immigrants and their U.S.-born children together represent a significant and growing share of the American population, with Latino families constituting the largest immigrant-origin group.
The emotional labor of the first generation
Being primera generación means carrying a double weight: the weight of your parents' sacrifice and the weight of your own adaptation. It often means code-switching — speaking Spanish at home, English at school, and some mixture of both that belongs to you alone. It means answering questions about your country that you've never visited, and feeling imposter syndrome in two directions at once — not American enough for some spaces, not Mexican or Dominican or Salvadoran enough for others. It means building an identity from materials that don't quite fit together the way the manuals said they would.
Carrying the legacy forward
What the primera generación is also doing — alongside all the translation, the adjustment, the negotiation — is building something new. A identity that holds both the country your family came from and the country you're making yours. Smile Mas makes pieces for people who want to wear that identity visibly and with pride — pieces that say: I know where I come from, and I know where I'm going.
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