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On the red tiles in my family's den

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I would dance and sing
to the made-for-TV movie "Gypsy,"

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starring Bette Midler.

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(Singing) "I had a dream.

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A wonderful dream, papa."

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I would sing it with the urgency
and the burning desire of a nine-year-old

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who did, in fact, have a dream.

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My dream was to be an actress.

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And it's true that I never saw
anyone who looked like me

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in television or in films,

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and sure, my family and friends
and teachers all constantly warned me

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that people like me
didn't make it in Hollywood.

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But I was an American.

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I had been taught to believe
that anyone could achieve anything,

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regardless of the color of their skin,

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the fact that my parents
immigrated from Honduras,

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the fact that I had no money.

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I didn't need my dream to be easy,

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I just needed it to be possible.

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And when I was 15,

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I got my first professional audition.

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It was a commercial
for cable subscriptions

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or bail bonds, I don't really remember.

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(Laughter)

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What I do remember
is that the casting director asked me,

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"Could you do that again,
but just this time, sound more Latina."

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"Um, OK.

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So you want me
to do it in Spanish?" I asked.

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"No, no, do it in English,
just sound Latina."

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"Well, I am a Latina,
so isn't this what a Latina sounds like?"

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There was a long and awkward silence,

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and then finally,

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"OK, sweetie, never mind,
thank you for coming in, bye!"

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It took me most of the car ride home
to realize that by "sound more Latina"

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she was asking me
to speak in broken English.

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And I couldn't figure out why the fact

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that I was an actual,
real-life, authentic Latina

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didn't really seem to matter.

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Anyway, I didn't get the job.

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I didn't get a lot of the jobs
people were willing to see me for:

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the gang-banger's girlfriend,

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the sassy shoplifter,

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pregnant chola number two.

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(Laughter)

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These were the kinds of roles
that existed for someone like me.

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Someone they looked at
and saw as too brown, too fat,

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too poor, too unsophisticated.

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These roles were stereotypes

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and couldn't have been further
from my own reality

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or from the roles I dreamt of playing.

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I wanted to play people
who were complex and multidimensional,

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people who existed in the center
of their own lives.

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Not cardboard cutouts that stood
in the background of someone else's.

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But when I dared to say that
to my manager --

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that's the person I pay
to help me find opportunity --

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his response was,

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"Someone has to tell that girl
she has unrealistic expectations."

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And he wasn't wrong.

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I mean, I fired him, but he wasn't wrong.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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Because whenever I did try to get a role
that wasn't a poorly written stereotype,

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I would hear,

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"We're not looking
to cast this role diversely."

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Or, "We love her,
but she's too specifically ethnic."

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Or, "Unfortunately, we already have
one Latino in this movie."

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I kept receiving the same message
again and again and again.

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That my identity was an obstacle
I had to overcome.

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And so I thought,

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"Come at me, obstacle.

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I'm an American. My name is America.

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I trained my whole life for this,
I'll just follow the playbook,

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I'll work harder."

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And so I did, I worked my hardest

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to overcome all the things
that people said were wrong with me.

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I stayed out of the sun
so that my skin wouldn't get too brown,

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I straightened my curls into submission.

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I constantly tried to lose weight,

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I bought fancier
and more expensive clothes.

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All so that when people looked at me,

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they wouldn't see a too fat,
too brown, too poor Latina.

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They would see what I was capable of.

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And maybe they would give me a chance.

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And in an ironic twist of fate,

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when I finally did get a role
that would make all my dreams come true,

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it was a role that required me
to be exactly who I was.

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Ana in "Real Women Have Curves"

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was a brown, poor, fat Latina.

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I had never seen anyone
like her, anyone like me,

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existing in the center
of her own life story.

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I traveled throughout the US

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and to multiple countries with this film

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where people, regardless of their age,
ethnicity, body type,

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saw themselves in Ana.

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A 17-year-old chubby Mexican American girl

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struggling against cultural norms
to fulfill her unlikely dream.

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In spite of what
I had been told my whole life,

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I saw firsthand that people actually did
want to see stories about people like me.

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And that my unrealistic expectations

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to see myself authentically
represented in the culture

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were other people’s expectations, too.

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"Real Women Have Curves"

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was a critical, cultural
and financial success.

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"Great," I thought, "We did it!

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We proved our stories have value.

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Things are going to change now."

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But I watched as very little happened.

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There was no watershed.

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No one in the industry
was rushing to tell more stories

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about the audience that was hungry
and willing to pay to see them.

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Four years later,
when I got to play Ugly Betty,

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I saw the same phenomenon play out.

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"Ugly Betty" premiered in the US
to 16 million viewers

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and was nominated
for 11 Emmys in its first year.

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(Applause)

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But in spite of "Ugly Betty's" success,

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there would not be another television show

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led by a Latina actress

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on American television for eight years.

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It's been 12 years

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since I became the first and only Latina

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to ever win an Emmy in a lead category.

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That is not a point of pride.

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That is a point of deep frustration.

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Not because awards prove our worth,

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but because who we see
thriving in the world

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teaches us how to see ourselves,

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how to think about our own value,

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how to dream about our futures.

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And anytime I begin to doubt that,

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I remember that there was a little girl,
living in the Swat Valley of Pakistan.

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And somehow, she got
her hands on some DVDs

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of an American television show

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in which she saw her own dream
of becoming a writer reflected.

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In her autobiography, Malala wrote,

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"I had become interested in journalism

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after seeing how my own words
could make a difference

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and also from watching
the "Ugly Betty" DVDs

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about life at an American magazine."

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(Applause)

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For 17 years of my career,

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I have witnessed the power our voices have

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when they can access
presence in the culture.

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I've seen it.

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I've lived it, we've all seen it.

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In entertainment, in politics,

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in business, in social change.

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We cannot deny it --
presence creates possibility.

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But for the last 17 years,

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I've also heard the same excuses

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for why some of us can access
presence in the culture

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and some of us can't.

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Our stories don't have an audience,

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our experiences won't resonate
in the mainstream,

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our voices are too big a financial risk.

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Just a few years ago, my agent called

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to explain to me why
I wasn't getting a role in a movie.

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He said, "They loved you

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and they really, really do want
to cast diversely,

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but the movie isn't financeable
until they cast the white role first."

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He delivered the message
with a broken heart

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and with a tone that communicated,
"I understand how messed up this is."

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But nonetheless, just like
hundreds of times before,

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I felt the tears roll down my face.

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And the pang of rejection rise up in me

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and then the voice of shame scolding me,

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"You are a grown woman,
stop crying over a job."

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I went through this process for years
of accepting the failure as my own

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and then feeling deep shame
that I couldn't overcome the obstacles.

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But this time, I heard a new voice.

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A voice that said, "I'm tired.

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I've had enough."

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A voice that understood

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my tears and my pain
were not about losing a job.

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They were about what
was actually being said about me.

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What had been said about me my whole life

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by executives and producers

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and directors and writers
and agents and managers

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and teachers and friends and family.

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That I was a person of less value.

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I thought sunscreen
and straightening irons

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would bring about change
in this deeply entrenched value system.

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But what I realized in that moment

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was that I was never actually asking
the system to change.

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I was asking it to let me in,
and those aren't the same thing.

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I couldn't change
what a system believed about me,

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while I believed what
the system believed about me.

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And I did.

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I, like everyone around me,

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believed that it wasn't possible
for me to exist in my dream as I was.

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And I went about
trying to make myself invisible.

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What this revealed to me
was that it is possible

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to be the person
who genuinely wants to see change

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while also being the person whose actions
keep things the way they are.

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And what it's led me to believe
is that change isn't going to come

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by identifying the good guys
and the bad guys.

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That conversation
lets us all off the hook.

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Because most of us
are neither one of those.

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Change will come

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when each of us has the courage

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to question our own fundamental
values and beliefs.

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And then see to it that our actions
lead to our best intentions.

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I am just one of millions of people

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who have been told
that in order to fulfill my dreams,

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in order to contribute
my talents to the world

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I have to resist the truth of who I am.

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I for one, am ready to stop resisting

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and to start existing
as my full and authentic self.

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If I could go back and say anything

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to that nine-year-old,
dancing in the den, dreaming her dreams,

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I would say,

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my identity is not my obstacle.

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My identity is my superpower.

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Because the truth is,

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I am what the world looks like.

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You are what the world looks like.

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Collectively, we are
what the world actually looks like.

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And in order for our systems
to reflect that,

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they don't have to create a new reality.

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They just have to stop
resisting the one we already live in.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)