The concept of cultural dualism and a love that crosses all boundaries was the subject of a lecture by Marie Arana on Thursday night in the Sun Room at the Memorial Union.

Arana is the editor of the Washington Post Book World, and is of Peruvian descent. Having come to America as an immigrant, Arana had to learn to be American, which she talks about in her most-popular work, “American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood.” It was nominated for a PEN-Memoir Award and the National Book Award.

“I am the product of a cultural class that started almost 500 years ago,” Arana said.

Arana began her lecture by saying that being labeled Hispanic is used as catch-all term, because even if you are from “the deepest parts of the Amazon, you are still called a Hispanic.”

“We are a large minority group that is classified by this tongue even though we don’t speak it very well,” Arana said. “We are truly a morphed race.”

Arana detailed her personal growth and development through her parents’ lives.

Arana’s father was a Peruvian-American immigrant who came to America during World War II and graduated from MIT, and her mother was an “All-American girl” from Kansas with “a few dark secrets,” Arana said.

Arana’s family life in Peru was a mixed one, with cultures colliding at almost every turn, where such simple tasks as how to pray, how to eat, and how to be raised became grounds for battle.

“[There’s] so much difference in the Latin culture than in the Anglo culture,” Arana said.

Arana said being partly raised in Latin America, she still remembers being scared of tribal ghost stories, showcasing the difference between American culture and the tribal culture of Peru.

“The [Peruvian] culture believed in the family more than anything else. It is a culture that worshipped the past and took its time looking back,” Arana said. “[With my mother’s culture] every day was a new beginning. A marvelous culture that believes in the future, that refused to be boxed in.”

The deep focus of her story was one of “life on living on the hyphen,” referring to the punctuation of the term Spanish-Americans.

A popular misconception, Arana said, is that all Hispanic cultures are derived from the Spanish tradition. However, she said that they are all “brothers and sisters.”

Those who were in attendance found Arana’s speech to enlighten their perspectives on culture.

“It was interesting, her perspective on things,” said Dallas Jones, freshman in genetics.