Growing up in New Jersey, telenovelas and variety shows connected me to my family and Dominican culture—even when they didn’t tell our exact story.
When I think about growing up Dominican in New Jersey, I don’t immediately remember the big milestones or major life events. Instead, I remember the television glowing in the corner of the room while dinner was being prepared in the kitchen. Spanish came through the speakers, competing with the steady clatter of pots and pans, family conversations, and the occasional good-natured argument over who got to choose the channel. More often than not, it was a toss-up between Univision and Telemundo, the anchors of Spanish-language broadcasting in American households.
I remember Marimar, starring Thalía and Eduardo Capetillo—my first television crush—playing on the screen, capturing our attention night after night. I remember weekends dedicated to Sábado Gigante and host Don Francisco, a massive variety program that our household looked forward to all week long. I remember watching Selena perform, and replaying her interviews and music videos on recording tapes because my family never seemed ready to let those moments go, holding onto her memory with a fierce and collective devotion.
There was something profoundly powerful about hearing Spanish spoken naturally in our home. Even when the storylines on screen weren’t specifically Dominican, they still felt deeply familiar. The expressions, the family dynamics, the music, the distinct humor, and the larger-than-life personalities reflected pieces of a culture we instinctively recognized.
Watching Marimar with my family was never a quiet, passive experience. My mom would shake her head in disbelief at a character’s questionable decision, and someone else in the room would immediately chime in, saying, "¡Te dije que eso iba a pasar!" Soon enough, the room would fill with overlapping voices, laughter, gentle teasing, and spirited debates over who was right and what the characters should have done instead.
It was the exact same energy I knew from my extended Dominican family gatherings: adults laughing at old stories, recounting family lore, and debating everything from local gossip to what was happening on television at that exact moment. Someone was always calling out from another room, and somehow, everyone was effortlessly pulled into the conversation. The show didn’t tell our exact story, but watching it with my mom and the rest of my family felt entirely like home.
Marimar wasn’t a Dominican show, and Selena was Mexican American, but culture doesn’t always come through direct, literal representation. Sometimes, it comes through a deeper sense of recognition.
At the time, I didn’t think of those ordinary evenings as acts of cultural preservation. I was simply a kid growing up in New Jersey, sitting on the couch and watching television with my family. Decades later, I realize those mundane, everyday moments were actively teaching me who I was and where I came from.
For many immigrant families, broadcast media served a purpose far greater than mere entertainment. It acted as a vital bridge between the world our parents had left behind and the new environment where we were growing up. For my Dominican family, these broadcasts helped us hold onto our language, our music, our humor, and an unbreakable connection to our homeland while we were simultaneously building a life in the United States.
That was the undeniable magic of appointment television. We watched because a show was scheduled to air at a specific time, and it organically became part of our family conversation because we had all experienced it together. I could navigate the English-speaking world at school all day and come home to a living room completely filled with Spanish, successfully growing up in New Jersey while still seeing vibrant pieces of Latin America and the Caribbean flashing on our screen. I never had to choose between being Dominican and being from New Jersey—I could simply be both.
Even today, hearing the familiar opening notes of Marimar instantly brings back vivid memories of those evenings with my family. However, the way I watch television and consume media has fundamentally changed. I no longer wait for a show to come on at a designated time, nor do I gather with my family in the living room to negotiate what we are all going to watch together. Now, I stream shows independently on my own devices whenever I have a spare moment. When something makes me laugh or reminds me of home, I still share it with my family, but that sharing now happens digitally, usually through a quick clip or a meme dropped into our family group chat.
The underlying connection remains, but it has taken on an entirely different shape. When I was growing up, a telenovela, a musical performance on Sábado Gigante, or a song broadcast on television could easily become tomorrow’s family conversation without anyone needing to plan it. Everyone had watched it. Everyone had an opinion. Today, in an era defined by endless choices and hyper-personalized digital feeds, we may watch completely different shows, follow entirely different creators, and discover culture through diverging pathways. Shared cultural moments haven’t vanished completely, but they have undeniably become less automatic.
At the same time, Latino creators are no longer waiting around to be given representation by traditional networks; they are actively building that representation themselves. A Dominican kid growing up in New Jersey can open their smartphone today and instantly find a digital community that directly reflects their unique experiences. I would never trade that unprecedented access or the expansive creative freedom that content creators enjoy today.
Yet, I occasionally miss the simple feeling that we were all watching the exact same thing at the exact same time.
The media platforms have undoubtedly expanded far beyond traditional telenovelas and variety shows to encompass TikTok, podcasts, YouTube, and on-demand streaming services, but my fundamental desire for connection has not changed. I still want to see something that reminds me of home—and share it with the people who made it feel like home in the first place.
For those of us who grew up navigating between two distinct worlds, culture is passed down through much more than just the formal stories we tell about where our families originated. It lives and breathes in our language, our family recipes, our music, and the ordinary, unscripted moments we spend together.
For me, that cultural foundation lives on in the enduring memory of a television glowing brightly in our New Jersey living room, filling our home with the sounds of Spanish. I once thought those programs were simply entertainment designed to pass the time. Now I understand that what truly shaped me wasn’t just what we watched on that screen, but the fact that we were watching it together as a family.
We now have more ways to connect with our culture than ever before in history. The ongoing challenge is finding ways to keep those connections shared. Culture isn’t merely something we consume in isolation; it is something we actively experience, remember, and pass on to the next generation.
