My Life on the Outside: Being a Chicano, but Barely

I am a Chicano, a Mexican/American if you will. I can't change that nor do I want to. I am also a half-ling who takes more after my European mother than my Mexican father; that said I have white skin and dark brown hair, with striking light brown eyes. I say all of this because my complexion has caused some problems for me. As a kid in Elementary and Middle school, my peers were composed of mostly African-Americans and Hispanic kids. I never felt accepted in school, I was an outcast in Elementary school, while I was attending Christian Life Center Academy. I was picked on by my peers and made to feel as though I should eat lunch alone on the stairs most days. I don't display many of the more accepted male traits known for my sex, accustomed to my race and that complicates matters. In middle school I tried to reinvent myself, acting like a wanna be. It didn't get me anywhere and I was made to feel like much more of an outcast. My first experience with a comment of how "this was all going back to Mexico" (referencing a belief of Mexican reacquisition) and back then I remember linking the idea, if only to feel like I belonged to a group.
 I recently attended a special reading of Inprint (a not for profit here in Houston) titled Red, White and Blue: Poets on Politics which featured one of my favorite authors from my child hood: Sandra Cisneros. It was an entertaining night to say the least, and the other educator that attended was brilliant, but I was there only because of Ms. Cisneros. For those of you who don't know, Ms. Cisneros an acclaimed author who happens to be a Chicana. It was a fairly enlightening night, until they opened up the forum for questions. It wasn't the questions asked by one of the audience members, which was about how there was not any Chicano creative writing staff at the University of Houston but the comment that from Texas to California was "Occupied Mexico." This second experience with a comment like this disturbed me because as a Chicano-American, and the first generation of my immediate family to attend college, because I relate more as an American. But, then again, it doesn't matter that I relate more as an American, because my skin tone as well as my inability to speak spanish, hinders my ability to relate to my hispanic peers and that is what is so depressing to me. Other than my Fathers side and some of his friends, I have not made a lasting relationship with any one of hispanic heritage, other than my "sisters" and their family whom are very special to me. I can handle this, I just wish I had the ability to feel apart of the community without feeling as though I am an outsider.