q&a: journalist tess garcia on finding home
"i have this corner full of people who are just happy i'm alive. and that's crazy to me."
Welcome to an it’s steffi interview! Today I’m here with Tess Garcia, a freelance fashion journalist and producer, whose writing has appeared in Glamour, Refinery29, and Highsnobiety, among many others.
You may recognize Tess Garcia from her wide breadth of work: her Jack Harlow cover story for Teen Vogue, her reviews for Entertainment Weekly, her stories on Latine identity, pop culture, politics and fashion. She produces lifestyle influencer Eileen Kelly’s podcast “Going Mental.” She is the TikTok face for luxury shoe brand Larroudé. She’s a certified yoga teacher, too.
I have known Tess for a while. Home is something I inevitably think about when I think of her. My contact is still saved in Tess’ phone as ROOMIE, even though we haven’t lived together for seven years. We met as freshman year roommates at the University of Michigan, and have been yoked together ever since. So when I think of Tess, I think about the four walls that we called our home at 18, as well as the feeling we have built as friends in the many years after.
So much of our perspectives are influenced by our definitions of home, and the idea of home occupies much of our societal fixation. It's a theme that I dissect a lot. Not just the physical exterior of the homes you grew up in and how that impacts you, but the wider concept of home — motherland, family history, diaspora, whatever — as well.
In December, Tess ventured back to Argentina for the first time since she was 12 years old, alone, for a family wedding. She would be spending three weeks there, in a rural town outside the city of Mendoza. It just so happened that the World Cup was kicking off at the same time. What would unfold is a truly magical thing. In this conversation, I asked Tess to retell the story of her adventure to Argentina, but also unpack some of the many things around “home” that we inevitably attach to it.
I hope this conversation can be of use to anyone who has a complex or unsure relationship with their imagination of identity. This is a story about homecoming.
We’re currently eating raw cookie dough from Sweet Loren’s.
Aw, it has a little biography on the back. “After beating cancer in my early 20s—” oh.
Vegan snacks always have like, that bio on the back of the bag with the most traumatic story you’ve ever heard.
Shoutout to Loren for beating cancer, though. And giving us this cookie dough.
Anyway. Tell me about your first trip to Argentina, when you were 12 years old. What do you remember?
Facebook had gotten huge over the last few years, so I remember being like, fuck, everyone needs to know that I'm here. So I’d post a lot. And by everyone, I mean my 400 Facebook friends.
400 was kind of a lot for middle school, though.
I guess so. I remember feeling really uncomfortable most of the time. Not even uncomfortable, but almost like a light blanket of embarrassment over literally every interaction, even if it was just me sitting in silence.
People didn't really speak English at that time in the town, besides one male cousin my age. My mom doesn't speak any Spanish. She understands enough, like a tiny, tiny bit — but like, not Argentine Spanish in particular.
So I felt white as fuck. Which is funny, because at the time, I didn't understand global perceptions of Argentina as being white, which is an issue I could get into a whole other time. I've never really had to think about race in my life literally ever, because I'm white, but I felt whiter than everyone around me.
How much of that do you think was like, where you were in understanding your identity at that time, versus raging puberty?
Until that point, in particular, when people asked about my last name, I would tell them my dad was born in Argentina and moved here when he was like, seven or eight. It's almost like I felt like I needed to qualify the fact that my dad was not just born there and immediately taken out — he had more history there than that. As though to say, I was more part of the culture than I actually felt, and justifying getting to say that I have this heritage on one side of my family.
In America, or at least in Michigan, I had a pretty good idea of like, where I stood in terms of my school's social hierarchy and things like that. But in Argentina, not only was I in a place where I didn't know a lot of people, it was a place with a completely different context.
At the same time, Facebook was coming up and it the beginning of that feeling where being perceived is the most cringey thing at that time, but for the first time I was being perceived virtually. And then, I was also being perceived in a culture that I couldn't even get any read on, on how I was being perceived within it.
I'm not sure I had this many thoughts at the time, but I did attribute a lot of these general feelings to not speaking Spanish. Now I can look back and be like, it not only that, it has to do with feeling like you're not ethnically what's in your blood. I just equated that to Spanish at the time.
So what was home to you?
My definition of home was very literal. As long as I remember, we've lived in the same house. When I was younger, I never had a conscious longing to go back to a place that I didn't know anything about.
You speak Spanish now. What motivated your desire to learn?
I took Spanish in high school, which I was good at because the bar is below the floor. But I think the motivation to really learn Spanish partially came from that Argentina trip. I have a cousin in Argentina who I always wished I could be close with, because I wanted that sort of close female familial relationship with someone my age. And I knew it's something she wanted with me, but language was a barrier.
Social media was another motivator. There would be also those meme pages, you know, the silly Facebook groups, that were like, “Latinos will understand” or “if you're Latino, this.” I'd understand bits and pieces, but then they would refer to something in Spanish and and be like, damn. Once again.
Once my cousin and I connected on social media, that changed everything. We had a channel for communication, and we wanted to communicate.
Right. So in college, we both took really intensive Spanish courses, and you also studied abroad in Spain. Did knowing the language change anything?
I think so. Not only because it tied me to my identity, but it tied me to my identity in relation to other Latinos in the US. And for me, that was one of the only ways I felt I could connect with that side of myself, was to talk with other people. Even if they weren't Argentine, I could learn about cultures that have been influenced by similar things or that existed in the same diaspora.
You had originally planned to go to Argentina after graduation.
Right, in May 2020. Then we know what happened. I was sort of putting it off once we could travel again. But I knew my cousin was going to get married, so I wanted to plan around those dates.
I was scared. It was my first time leaving the country since studying abroad, since the COVID started. I had that anticipation of knowing that something is going to pay off, but just having no idea how. And that was so scary, for whatever reason.
What’s the first thing you saw when you first went back to your family’s hometown?
My cousin said, “this is Radiator Springs,” you know like in Cars? I cannot unsee that image. It’s a small town. It's dusty like that. My [second] aunt picked me up from the airport, and on the way, I saw the storefront where my grandpa's family used to own a furniture store.
Did your grandpa ever tell you that before?
No, he doesn't talk about it, I think partially because he had a tough family background. There was a lot of stuff I hadn't known about. My aunt kept all these photos that my parents had sent her in this big album. She kept everything. Things that I'm like, I didn't know she even existed when she was receiving these photos — photos of my parents at their wedding that I'd never seen, in front of a little beetle car with a “just married” sign. Like, people in the States wouldn't keep photos of distant family. Or like, they'd be like gathering dust somewhere, not front and center in a photo album. I mean, we don't have photos of my aunt at her wedding in our house.
So I really didn't do much sightseeing. Because for me, it was more, I wanted to feel like I was integrated into the life that I never got to know growing up. I wanted to talk to the people like my grandma's sister. That was a much bigger priority than going to hang out in Mendoza, or going on a hike. I would love to do that, and someday I will. But like, right now, what I want to do is talk to these people who I feel like I have a lifetime of catching up to do with.
We ate dinner together. My uncle made asado. We watched the World Cup, my cousin and her husband took me to a winery one day. That was pretty much the itinerary, along with being shopped around to whatever random family affair was going on.
What was it like to physically be there with your family? Did your relationship to them change?
For a long time, I also had this image of my cousin from when we were kids. You know how in middle school, the most intimidating thing ever is a slightly older girl who's cool?
Yeah. Someone who's comfortable with themselves is like the scariest thing ever when you're awkward and 12.
That was it. Like, the last time I saw her, she wore a strapless dress, and I was like, that's insane. And then she was nice to me, which like, what middle schooler has manners? We got a lot closer with social media and her visiting me once in New York, but I had to wrap my head around the fact that like, we've hardly seen each other. But it wasn't weird. I was just happy to be there, and everyone was so sincere and genuinely happy I was there, too.
I handed her off to her dad before he walked her down the aisle. She was shaking so hard during the drive to the church. I gave her a bracelet that I got her that day. And she immediately put it on and was like, “I'm wearing it.” Like, how long have you had your wedding planned, your dress and jewelry? And she was like, “it matches, so I'm gonna wear it.” Little things like that, where it's just like, this is somebody who I feel so intimately connected to.
Argentina won the World Cup for the first time since 1986, the day after your cousin's wedding, so I know you were basically awake the whole weekend.
Soccer is a religion. Banks were closed the day after we won. There were so many family superstitions for each game — everyone had to wear the same clothes for every game, one dog had to be outside the house and one dog had to be in the house. Everyone had to be in the same rooms they were in the last time they won. Everyone cried. There's a huge sense of pride around soccer, I think because there are so few opportunities for Argentina to be on the world stage. Like, while I had a great time, the electricity did shut off several times while I was there. If you want to create opportunities for yourself, you have to leave the country, basically. So I think there's a larger sense of togetherness when it comes to the sport.
It's really easy to romanticize but I will say I witnessed a shit ton of racism. People will say anything watching a fucking soccer game. I know part of the reason I had an amazing experience is because I look how I look. I speak Spanish. I'm American. And I have family there. But it was hard to judge everything immediately. I didn't grow up in Argentina, so I can't understand where these people are coming from. That's not a pass for being racist, but I don't think I have the perspective to judge.
Did your relationship to the idea of home change at all?
Yeah. It could honestly make me cry thinking about I was raised on a level of support that I didn't even know I had. That was just implicit too. I just assumed these people didn't know who the fuck I was, because why would they? I barely knew who they were. But not only were they aware of me, they're people who would would drop everything for me if I asked them to. If I had known that I had that level of of love from people, in some of those really hard moments, I wonder how differently I would have viewed them. Maybe I would have been able to view them as something more temporary, if I'd known that I had this consistent backing of people who were never gonna go away, who are thinking about me.
Before I left, I had plenty of moments to think about this in a way. What do I want to take away from this moment?
I want to fucking leave my apartment, even though I can work from home. I want to dance and sing. I want to put myself in vulnerable positions on purpose, even when I know there's a chance that they probably won't go well. And it's okay if I lose sight of it sometimes. I'm not gonna waste that time being mad at myself for having not fully taken advantage of a moment, or for picking apart every moment and wondering if I could have made the most of it even more. Because what? I'm not gonna waste the 16 days that I had there to go hike the Andes or something. I want to embrace the people who go out of their way for me. I want to believe there are no better or worse decisions in life, only different ones.
I have this corner full of people who are just happy I'm alive. And that's crazy to me.
What image comes to mind when you think about this trip?
It's nighttime. I'm on the dance floor at the wedding. Any song can be playing, literally any one that I know every word to, or one that I've never heard in my life, but I'm dancing to as though I've known it my whole life. I'm with people that I don't know, but I'm going to just act like I do. There could be no moment, more fulfilling than this. And I don't feel any melancholy for when I'm going to feel this again.
This is everything I ever could have hoped for this experience. To reach a point where I can be this carefree, surrounded by people who don't fucking know me but are still being kind. Many of whom just met me, but genuinely already love me, and who I already love. I have the capacity to love and be loved like that, and to be that carefree and willing to make a fool of myself, and know that embarrassment will arise sometimes, but still be down to try it and fail. I don't need to be at a wedding or outside America or drunk to feel it. But I know that feeling now.
You can follow Tess on Instagram and Twitter @hithisistess.