No one is in a rush on Sunday afternoons at Plaza Fiesta. But that’s not to suggest that things at this sprawling indoor mall move slowly. As I stand in line at Las Recetas y Antojitos de la Abuela waiting to order my usual—a box of 10 suadero tacos so small they fit in the palm of my hand—I’m grateful for all the bustle around me. Kids running on the playground while their parents hold their caramel-filled churros. A family of five laughing loudly as they make a mess of a tlayuda, a Oaxacan pizza-tostada hybrid topped with chorizo, avocado, pickled jalapeños, and strings of chewy cheese. Grandmothers exchanging secrets as they watch the mariachi band playing its weekly show. A beaming teen twirling for her parents in the crinoline mille-feuille of her garnet quinceañera dress.

Atlanta was very different when I was her age.

When my parents, both of whom were born and raised in Mexico City, moved our family to Georgia’s capital in 1979 from Connecticut, (and before that, Rio de Janeiro, where I was born) finding anything Mexican was an arduous task. Tortillas and canned chipotles were not the norm at our local A&P. Taquerias were few and far between. The butcher never carried the marinated pork we needed to make our Sunday night al pastor tacos. We depended on trips back to Mexico or my grandmothers’ visits for a taste of home. They’d arrive with worn suitcases overstuffed with chicharrones, chiles to make mole poblano to eat with our Thanksgiving turkey, and the bloodred chile piquin and limes my dad would smuggle into the movie theater to sprinkle over popcorn.

Clockwise from left middle: A jarrito loco cocktail, a plate of devoured rosca de tacos from Las Recetas y Anotjitos de La Abuela, a piña loca from La Espiga Dorada, and a bag of Dorilocos. Photo by David Crawford

At the time, the Mexican community in and around Atlanta was small and fragmented. We had no center and nowhere to find the comforts of home. It was hard for my parents, who missed what they knew and loved as they made a life in America. But for me—a Jewish Brazil-born kid who’d never actually lived in Mexico—it made finding my identity even more complicated.

Among Mexicans, I spoke Spanglish, albeit with an excellent accent that confused them. With my frizzy brown hair and freckled translucent skin, I looked more like Punky Brewster than my own sister, the Latin stunner with an olive hue and a mane like a black stallion. She soaked up all of my mother’s Latin blood, while I was a carbon copy of my Ashkenazi father, whose parents immigrated to Mexico from Poland well before he was born. Ballet practice was just as ostracizing; my mom used to joke that she could always find us because we were the only dark-haired kids in a sea of blonde Southern girls. Blending in was not an option for my painfully insecure self. And my childish need to fit in made me feel even more like an outsider: A person from everywhere, but who belonged nowhere.