Raquel Cepeda

Raquel Cepeda (born June 9, 1973) is an American journalist, critic, film-maker, and autobiographer of Dominican descent.

Quotes

 * Bridge the gap with and extend the olive branch to people from past generations, because you don’t know everything.
 * On one of the advice she’d give to younger women in “Interview: Raquel Cepeda On Identity, Race & Hip-Hop” in Vice (2016 Mar 16)


 * The way we construct race in the States is so different from the way people construct race all across Latin America and the Caribbean. All of a sudden you come to the States and race is foisted upon you. Then my generation’s like, “Wait a minute, where do my ancestors come from?...
 * On how race is perceived in the United States in “Becoming Latina: An Interview with Raquel Cepeda” in Hazlitt (2013 Jun 26)


 * Sometimes I’ll bring that up and people will say, “Well, you can’t find a true Indian on the Dominican Republic,” and I’m like, “You can’t find a true anything.” What is it about us suppressing this part of ourselves and highlighting this other part of ourselves? I think all that leads to bad self-esteem, which has a ripple effect on society.
 * On the relationship between race and memory in “Becoming Latina: An Interview with Raquel Cepeda” in Hazlitt (2013 Jun 26)


 * My sense of self and my identity have been enhanced more than they’ve changed. I’m still Latina-American for the purposes of living here in the States. Sometimes I say I’m Dominican, or Dominican-American, depending on who I’m talking to; the codewords change depending on the community you’re engaging with. But for me, it was a very spiritual journey. It married the logos, the rational, the science, with the mythos, the spiritual.
 * On how her definition of ethnicity and racial identity have changed over the years in “Becoming Latina: An Interview with Raquel Cepeda” in Hazlitt (2013 Jun 26)