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" I remember once I was in the locker room of the hotel I work at changing to head home, when one of the Latina housekeepers came in during her break. &amp;quot;Ya terminaste?&amp;quot; she asked me. Oh crap. Trying not to expose how terrible my Spanish was, I smiled and nodded at her that I had, and finished it off with a &amp;quot;y tu?&amp;quot; Before I knew it, she had gone on to rant about her day\u2026then asked me a question I couldn&amp;#039;t understand. From the look on her face, I knew she could tell I didn&amp;#039;t get anything she just said. I smiled, wished her good night, and walked out of the locker room super embarrassed.  I have always felt self-conscious for not being able to speak Spanish fluently, and never felt authentically Latina. But it was my last year of college, the year my abuelita died, that these feelings suddenly turned into fear I was going to lose whatever little claim I had to my heritage. My abuelita moved from El Salvador to Los Angeles the year I was born to be my caretaker while both my parents worked. My childhood is filled with memories of platanos con crema, my abuelita dancing to Julio Iglesias in the kitchen, and being scolded in Spanish while she tried to work out the knots in my long colochos. In addition to being a second mother to me, my abuelita was also the only person I spoke to in Spanish. I understand now that I didn&amp;#039;t use proper verb tenses or pronunciation when speaking to her, but she understood me. My abuelita Rosa was my El Salvador, and when she passed away, I realized I had lost that too. I felt like I was one of those counterfeit handbags they sell in downtown Los Angeles, made to bypass like the real thing, but upon closer examination wasn&amp;#039;t of the same quality. I began to study my heritage, watching Spanish films both like Y Tu Mama Tambien, and How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer, I researched places to eat pupusas, and conversations with my relatives turned into inquisitions about life in El Salvador. I was trying to build the credence to feel I would be qualified to pass on my family&amp;#039;s heritage to the next generation. I wanted it to feel legit whenever I said &amp;quot;I am a Latina.&amp;quot; Something that helped me was when I sat down with a college amiga and was able to reflect on the experiences I was having with the culture self-education I was conducting. When I brought up the film Clueless, without any prompting she began reciting the lines to the &amp;quot;you know I don&amp;#039;t speak Mexican&amp;quot; scene, the part in the film where Cher assumes her Salvadoran housekeeper is Mexican. Discovering that a rather irrelevant exchange in a movie held significance to another Latina, like it did for me was resonating. It made me wonder what other things I had in common with Latinas. I can&amp;#039;t help but believe that there must be others who feel like I do, put perhaps are too embarrassed to express their feelings or ask questions.  This is why Cosmo For Latinas is starting &amp;quot;Latina Like Me&amp;quot;, a platform to share all our aventuras being Latina, our thoughts on pop culture, whether it be movies, television or music, and addressing the unanswered questions about what it mean to grow up Latina. Whether they make us laugh, cry or curse, be it ours careers, fashion choices, relationships, or familias, you name it we&amp;#039;ll talk about it here every week. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a4121/angelica-bonomo-latina-like-me/?click=rel>