An American Haunting

by
Susie Estrada

I write and then erase, over and over again, the outline of my dissertation. I know the story I want to tell; it’s mine. It is written in the creases around my eyes, in the folds of my skin, and in the layer of flesh that holds me together—bound by trauma, hope, and resilience. My mother is both my American hero and the Llorona who weeps after me long after I have drowned in her fear and pain. She has passed down our history through consejos, no matter how ill-advised or deeply rooted in the patriarchy and respectability she thinks can still keep her safe, ignoring that they were the stones and fists. Her consejos promise safety as I swirl into a cycle that started long before her.

I want to tell a story. A story all my own and yet not mine at all. A story of whom I do not know and whose faces I cannot see, but whom I can feel deep within me. The echoes of a memory that was so clear just last night, but that I can’t bring into view when fully awake. When the shadows loomed, they were the ones who cloaked me as I prayed. “God loves me, he will never let anyone hurt me.” Still, before I could even write a full sentence or my name in a straight line, I had already been stripped of the basic right to naivety, to my body, and exploration. Where others were allowed curiosity, autonomy, and naive, clumsy exploration, I learned shame, secrecy, and punishment. Shame festers and consumes not just voices and people, but also the opportunity to break generational curses. Who would we be if we could own our stories, be seen, and give a name to the shadows that threaten our existence? Shame pushes us into secrecy and darkness; it tells us that we are to blame for our pain. Shame is the ghost in the machine of the human mind (Fishkin).

I braid the essence of adolescence with adulthood as the adolescent faces adultification and exploitation with more resilience than the adult, who takes flight in the spaces that reject this history. What would it be like not to live a life in constant threat and contradiction? To be in danger because of race or general phenotype, gender, being likable, being too likable, getting good grades, but also running in the streets, having a house regardless of what monsters are waiting inside, and at the core, asking what is real if those who protected me simultaneously targeted me? At the heart of my research are the questions and events I never loudly speak of. What made me special also made me a target for predators and jealous minds. I had to act tough to survive. I had to buy into the belief that I was somehow special for doing what no one else would do, only to realize that they would never do to anyone else what they did to me.

And still, we yearn. Us without a home, destined to always walk, hoping that the road we are on will take us back to where we belong, only to find that we were always, always alone. Rooted in hope, no matter how it comes and how it goes, I am the American haunting. I am the ghost of the American dream. I am the extermination, the justification, and the subjection. To live in this skin is to be both a traitor and betrayed. My mother’s voice echoes a warning at every turn, and the unwelcome touch of men fills my belly with the intuitive recognition of danger. I am what reaches for the light and pulls itself up from the ground on a land that was promised to be for me and for you—a land of opportunity, safety, and belonging—or so I once recited in my fourth-grade choir.

I am the reminder of what was here and will continue to be. I am a walking testimony of progress. A first-generation Latina, born and raised in California, the daughter of a Salvadorían immigrant, a survivor, out of spite or will, it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t change the fact that we are here. We are here! Spanish and English morphed tongues, bruised knees, tired from the cultural, emotional, linguistic, and physical labor, and while yes, at times humiliated, occasionally erased, and frequently overlooked, we survive, and we thrive.

I am the American haunting. I am the fulfillment of a promise. I circle back, I echo, I wail, and I demand to be seen—in the corner of the room, captured in a photo where no one thought anyone should be, I make my apparition and remind America of what it has taken, what it is promised, and what it owes. I am the reckoning. I am no longer the anchor baby drowned in a river; I am the phenomenon observed across America, a sighting and a voice that with each passing year increases in volume and frequency. We are the children born from shame, self-surveillance, assumption, and judgment. We are the children placed as far from home as possible so that we would be anything other than targets. But no flower lives when pulled from its roots. Without comprehensive education, an accurate representation of historical events and contributors, and truly inclusive and welcoming spaces, students at the K-12 level begin to learn what confines they must fall within to survive and be accepted. These confines soon become a cage too small, the binding until we can’t breathe anymore. In this space, educators and school administrators must decide whether to help students quench their thirst or wither. No matter how hard I try or how far I climb, no matter how many choices I make right, I am wrong. Distance and respectability did not save me. I dance with the shadows, a witch of America’s making. This haunting is not just personal—it’s statistical.

Dignity says that everyone has inherent dignity regardless of who they are or what they have done. It is not like respect; it does not have to be earned. Perhaps trying to find my dignity, not knowing if it was even there at the start, is what keeps me anchored. I do not find it in the camps of the detained or conversations about worthy access to resources. I would assume that dignity crosses all groups and political parties and that, at its foundational level, being a person means care for the small and vulnerable. I remind America of its promises, and I whisper I love you. Love is accountability, love is encouragement to be better. America tells me that I am the problem. I show up and try, and America, in all its gaslighting ways, says I have not tried hard enough. Why can’t you look at me for me and love me, all of me? Even with resentment in my heart, I bleed for you.

I write and scrap yet another version of my dissertation. How do I discuss respectability politics without compromising my own respectability? Respectability is the grape-flavored drink that promises safety. My mom is respectable. My mom learned English, worked, married, and had a child—a nuclear family. My mom was not safe, not as a child, not as a teen, and not as a woman. On the surface, I am respectable. Respectability did not keep me safe. Respectability says get good grades, go to school, make the right choice, be a good girl, and be nice. Be so fucking nice that when they hurt you, betray you, and abandon you, they won’t have to think twice about what they’ve left behind.

All those things helped me pass. But it was the unrespectable space that saved me. Silence and shame suffocated me out of jobs, out of connection, and out of my mind into suicidality. Respectability said we do not talk about shadows; meanwhile, the shadows cloaked me for survival. To tell this story, I must be vulnerable. To survive, I must share our stories. “Telling our stories is reparative. Even as it makes me vulnerable to judgment, I talk about shame. I tell and retell my story. Each time, I see myself in a new, if not shameless, then shame-less light. This is the beginning of our recovery” (Petro).

Vulnerability has only shown me the places where I am weak. I need to eat. How do I say that I want to argue that we need to do away with respectability, only so that I can selfishly finally breathe? I am tired of being afraid. I want people to see me, all of me. I want to tell them that they don’t even have to like me, but that I deserve to be promised safety. I want to say that I am dignified. Even while playing the game, performing the way I have been told is necessary, performing respectability and intelligence, and worthiness, people have still slandered my name. Losing the game is more than the financial burden; it’s game over. It’s proof and the psychological and emotional warfare that fuels the inner critic, who is no longer a whisper but a shrill. Game over calls you out on your performance and calls you a liar, an impostor, a fraud, and it laughs and taunts as it strips you down, removing all value and certainty of who you are.

To speak of respectability politics is to speak about how men have used my body for their gain; for pleasures and finance, it’s all the same—I never got a say. So why should I be ashamed of the times when I finally did things my way? Respectability is like being in a toxic marriage. A marriage where you never measure up, and every step taken is on eggshells. Unrecognized effort creates resentment and disconnect—in this marriage, we have lost intimacy. We are now rearranging and omitting letters—from intimate to inmate, and I am a prisoner to a dance I never planned to attend. Education was supposed to free me, and instead, through its curriculum, policies, and general culture, I find it trying to mold me, shape me; it seeks to contort and blend me, but I never quite fit in. My graduate school acceptance letter read: I love you, you’re perfect, you have so much to offer. In practice, I keep finding myself only looking in, falling short, and needing to shape up. Graduate school, as an extension of America’s path to respectability, serves as a reminder that superficially, I am wanted, but at its core, I am nothing more than an accessory.

Yes, this American haunting almost feels cyclical and intimate in its violence as I repeat the cycles of my mother, and her mother, and probably her mother before. All in the name of respectability. Respectability functions as the systemic gaslighting, coded messages about our value and place in society that shape self-image and behavior. It is the driving force to be better than our neighbors, our family, and our community. What does it mean to make it out? No one cautions that breaking through does not mean piercing the veil; it means selling the parts of yourself that made you whole for a false sense of security. To be respectable is to constantly wait for the rug to be pulled out from under you. Respectability politics says, “I am better. I overcame! You should, too.” Respectability breeds shame, especially when the things that have become innate, reactive, even, like hydrogen and oxygen, and the rapid decomposition of nitroglycerin, make it so you can’t breathe out of fear that you will finally be seen. In the end, they always say, there is no respectability in being this angry. The ghosts, shadows, and demons whisper from the edge of the room: Who are you? One day, they will see you for who you really are. If they knew you, they would not love you.

Respectability creeps into the human psyche in ways that have yet to be discussed in the education space. Respectability has been masked as dignity to shape behavior and assign value to human life. As with substance use, sex work, gang affiliation, being diagnosed with HIV or AIDS, or being unhoused, these experiences are framed as the consequences of an undignified life. The undignified then become stories to shape future generations: La Siguanaba to shape female behavior into fidelity and subservience, La Llorona into a warning about giving into female rage, the Gilgo Beach murders a warning about sex work, and many more, attributing key characteristics to good or evil, or in this case dignified and undignified, as if this duality is all there is to the human experience. This leaves little room to understand the contradiction in how the things that save us also make us vulnerable.

So what am I trying to say when I become my own weeping woman, too tongue-tied to fully explain that this is a love letter, a call to action, a demand for justice, a scream to be seen? I’m saying that I matter. I matter more than the seat at the table that people say I should occupy. I am more than the need to be saved. I matter in that I am here out of my mother’s love story for the sex worker who saved her life when she crossed the border, selling what she had so that the group could eat. I matter in the toxic advice that I get from my mother. Ultimately, I cannot blame her for what she doesn’t know and cannot know. Yes, maybe she isn’t thriving, and maybe I shouldn’t even be alive, but damn it, she survived, didn’t she?

My mother is the embodiment of the dignified American dream. A heterosexual tale of violence and betrayal, devotion to one company that, for their thirtieth anniversary, said, “Hey, thanks! Would you like a commemorative backpack? If you’re feeling adventurous, how about a kayak?” My mother shines most beautifully when she lets it all go, and while I hope she never forgets me, I hope that age gives her the freedom to let go of the need for respectability. Respectability did not keep us safe or fed; it was my mother’s legs, knees, and strength; it was her navigation and tricks; it was her grit. Respectability chained her to violent heterosexual relationships and ratchet-armed her into silence and compliance or shame when she resisted. Respectability cages her from being who she wants to be beyond the judgment and approval of others. It is better for the one judging than the one judged.

I heard a statistic that pregnant women are more likely to be the victim of violent crime and that violent crime, homicide, is the leading cause of death for pregnant women (“Homicide Leading Cause”). “It might just be a coincidence, but I’m suspicious. This man was standing outside and then followed me in, ending up in every aisle I was in. I just left my stuff and left. I didn’t have my pepper spray.” I received this text message while revising this essay. For countless women, this story echoes in every intuitive RUN. Gender based violence (Essue, B. M., et al.) is the direct result of structural inequality and systemic barriers. Gender inequality is reinforced through feedback loops (Dahal, P., et al.) that reinforce a culture that is more likely to blame a woman for being a victim than the offender for offending. In a society that prioritizes respectability over safety, no one is safe.

Wisdom comes to us through storytelling, through coded messages in our DNA, and through quiet observation. Wisdom is the instinctual rejection of a person’s energy, intuition, and arms holding us, tightening—Mija, listen. Even with disconnection from history and family, spiritual and energetic connections can never be broken. We must only retrain ourselves to learn the language of our ancestors and believe them the first time we hear the message. As wounded healers, we attract the broken, the wounded. We are both the haunted and the haunting. Policymakers should look to these ghosts for guidance. The issues faced today, immigration, violence, poverty, climate change, and more, are not new. Perhaps the answers can be found not in what future studies can show but in what we have already seen and failed to acknowledge.

Works Cited

Dahal, P., et al. “A Qualitative Study on Gender Inequality and Gender-Based Violence in Nepal.” BMC Public Health, vol. 22,
article 2005, 2022, https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-022-14389-x.
Essue, B. M., et al. “Women’s Experiences of Gender-Based Violence Supports Through an Intersectional Lens: A Global
Scoping Review.” BMJ Public Health, vol. 3, no. 1, 2025, article e001405, https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/3/1/
e001405.
Fishkin, G. L. The Science of Shame and Its Treatment. Parkhurst Brothers Publishers, 2016.
“Homicide Leading Cause of Death for Pregnant Women in the U.S.” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 21 Oct. 2022,
https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/homicide-leading-cause-of-death-for-pregnant-women-in-u-s/.
Petro, M. Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2024.

QUOTE AS:
Susie Estrada. An American Haunting. The Living Commons Collective Magazine. N.5, July 2026. p. 73-80