My books, my educational shows, my “conversations” with my mother, were all in English. Portuguese bleeding into my life only when I was with my father or grandparents. I couldn’t speak until I was three, and when I eventually did, English came pouring out, while Portuguese awkwardly stumbled. My mom had me tested and found that English had actually become my first language. A language I had no real cultural experiential connection with had ingrained itself so deeply into the pathways of my brain that I didn’t just speak it better, I thought in it better.

The more time passed, the more my linguistic framework became justified by the environment around me. São Paulo had always been a cultural melting pot, but through globalization, the United States’ influence began to take hold of our culture. Globalization, in theory, allows for cross-cultural communication, but the fact of the matter is that most channels of communication are dominated by the United States. It’s hard to have any sense of a local culture when the majority of shows on TV are American shows, made for American audiences. When the majority of films in theaters are American films, played fully in English, with references to other American media and events. When the majority of social media apps are developed by American companies, and their user base is comprised of mostly American users.

Not knowing English isn’t just a problem for work, it’s a problem for existing. And you don’t just have to learn English — you have to learn America.

By middle school, I was going to movie theaters to watch US Military-backed Marvel movies in English with Portuguese subtitles, I was watching Vine compilations with my school friends during lunch, listening to American songs on my iPod Touch.

I didn’t live in America, but I lived through America. I wasn’t American, and yet I felt like I was, at least a little bit; I had to be. Even outside of cultural imports like memes, film, music, we’ve always had to be aware of America’s political and economic decisions, as those directly affect our economy and our political landscape.

My learning English from birth may have primed me for what was to come; it may have made my love for America greater, my brain more susceptible to its relentless propaganda, but I quickly wasn’t the only one being split between these two languages, these two places, these two cultures. It was all of us.

We are all American now.

I did my undergraduate studies in the United States as I’d always dreamed of. I went to a small liberal arts college to study film and photography. I was extremely cautious during the beginning of my time there, hiding my identity as a Brazilian both in social interactions and in my work.

No one was ever outwardly aggressive. No one ever told me “go back to where you came from,” at least not seriously. And that was the issue. It starts innocently enough: “Brazil? That’s cool!” “You speak Spanish?” “Oh, sorry, Portuguese.” “I bet the parties are legendary!” “Are there monkeys there?” “Do you Samba?” “You must be great at soccer.” “The women there…” It was easier to blend in than go through these conversations; I’d done my research after all.

I had, towards the latter end of my undergraduate studies, become slowly more comfortable talking about my identity in my work. My experiences as a Brazilian growing up in the digital age, longing to be a participant in American culture, and the alienation I felt trying to assimilate in the United States. It was something that was difficult to talk about, but that I was happy my classmates accepted and even related to in their own ways.

In 2024, I was accepted into graduate school in a major city in the United States to continue my studies in photography at a very prestigious institution. I was familiar with the faculty and their work, I’d researched the school’s alumni and current cohort, and I was ecstatic to be in a diverse community of artists and academics, in a space where I could freely experiment and push the boundaries of my work. Here, I wouldn’t have to worry about policing my identity, about the expectations placed upon my work because of my nationality. I thought I wouldn’t be expected to play the Brazilian role.

I had an in-progress critique with my cohort ten days after the United States’ presidential election. I was making a massive installation around American politics, aesthetics, memes, and products. At that point, my work depicted what I feared, with a large part of the wall dedicated to the rise of right-wing populism in America, and the other part dedicated to the rise of unmoderated technocapital transhumanism.

As I’m explaining my thought process and artistic practice behind the work, one of my peers tells me that my work has no stakes. I asked them to elaborate, to which they said none of the things I was talking about in my work affected me; I wasn’t American, so I could always just go home, and all of this dread would just go away.

I could always just go home.

What proceeded was the majority of my cohort echoing this sentiment that America had no effect on my life, that I didn’t have as much of a right as they did to speak about these subjects, and that I could just go home.

I was shocked. I never would have seen this coming in an environment so diverse, so open-minded and academic, so proudly left, echoing similar sentiments to the far-right. I wasn’t just having to defend my work, I had to defend my right to make work, my right to opinion, my right to be here.

I could always just go home… I could go back to where I came from… go back to where I came from. It all came rushing back. The reason I’d tried so hard to assimilate in America the first time around, and why I was always doomed to fail. It didn’t matter how good my accent was, how sanitized and non-controversial my work was, how well-versed I was in art, pop culture, and memes, how open I was about my love and care for this country that would not love me back.

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”- James Baldwin

I can’t just walk away, even if I wanted to. America is unescapable, omnipresent, and universal. America is Facebook, fireworks, Fortnite, FOX, Friends, The Simpsons, Trumpism, Twitter, the nuclear family, Taylor Swift, terrorism, customer obsession, CNN, Coca Cola, culture war, celebrity worship, 4chan, Pepe, patriotism, political extremism, Instagram, gated communities, long winding highways, McDonald’s, minion memes, mega stores, meta irony, Marvel movies, SUVs, suburbia, Reddit, Elon, AI, Amazon, woke, winning, God.

I am just as American as you. We are just as American as you. Ever since we were born, it’s your news on our televisions, your government interfering in ours, your movies in our cinemas, your companies on our soil, your memes in our phones. Your language and dialect permanently engraved into my vocal cords. I am American, by birthright.

Post-mortem, written April 8th, 2026: Why’d it take me this long to post this? I don’t know! Life? Busyness? Anxiety? Fear of failure? Fear of retaliation? No one reads anymore? (If you made it this far, thank you.) The good/bad news is, this piece will always be relevant to my practice. If anything in the year and some months since writing this, it’s become more relevant. I titled my first solo exhibition some months ago based on a line in this essay, “Not in America, Through,” and that exhibition almost didn’t even get to exist, as the institution exhibiting it decided last minute that they had issues with the copyrighted imagery I was using… as well as the wall text at a point.

I have to take the institution at their word. But it is strange. My work falls under parody law, and therefore is fair use. Bullshit lawsuits exist, sure, and I can understand an institution protecting itself from that, protecting me from that (supposedly), but the fact that things like the performance piece featured in the show, or even the wall text, were held in review by the institution points to something scarier, something urgent.

There’s a lot of fear in the art world, scratch that, the world itself, right now. Making art, making satire, speaking at all, often feels like the only thing we can do. Institutions that give people’s voices a platform are crucial now more than ever, and the fact that so many of them, even ones that built their platforms and communities on championing diversity of thought, are actively censoring and policing artworks that engage with themes of immigration and imperialism on any level isn’t just disappointing but terrifying.

My work got to continue existing, after a lot of back and forth and redesigning of marketing materials. The show’s opening wasn’t advertised by the institution, but even still, after hearing about the controversy, many of my peers came to the exhibit and show their support. Not only did it mean the world to me, but it’s also all we can do for each other and the art we believe in. I was lucky enough that my show didn’t get taken down, but if we stop showing up for each other, stop uplifting the things we care about, stop making ourselves heard, then the next person to wind up in my spot might not be as lucky.