This Latine Heritage Month, our “Mi Historia” series spotlights Latine celebs as they share how their families’ immigration stories shaped who they are – and why telling these stories is vital to empowering immigrant communities.
Throughout her career – from her days in girl group 3LW to “The Cheetah Girls” to co-hosting “The Real” – Adrienne Bailon has always shown pride in her Latinidad. Growing up on the Lower East Side with her Puerto Rican mom, Ecuadorian dad, and older sister, she credits her success to the strength of her family’s support.
“It has literally made me who I am,” she tells Popsugar. “With my Latinidad – you already know how I feel. We spent Hispanic Heritage Month together last year – there is nothing that makes me more proud.”
Bailon is recalling the Latine Heritage Month dinner she hosted last fall at El Castillo de Jagua on the Lower East Side, a Caribbean spot serving Dominican, Cuban, and Puerto Rican traditional dishes since 1986 – and an event I was honored to attend. The night felt like a celebration in her own home: the walls lined with family photos, her mom, dad, stepdad, sister, nieces, brother-in-law, husband Israel Houghton, and son Ever all present, along with close friends like Dasha Polanco and Angie Martinez.
Bailon even performed a few songs with her sister and father – a tradition from her childhood – before the night ended in merengue dancing. It was a living portrait of how central family remains in her life. In fact, she and Israel moved from Los Angeles to upstate New York in 2021 to be closer to their loved ones as they began building their own family. She believes that being raised with a family-oriented mindset, while also being encouraged to follow her dreams, is what has kept her grounded throughout her career.
This Latine Heritage Month, Bailon is partnering with Colgate-Palmolive and Walmart, a collaboration that came quite naturally.
“I definitely wanted to do it because I love the fact that they were representing in the most authentic way. When you’re talking about Fabuloso, Suavitel, Colgate, these are our brands,” she says. “I know Latinos that don’t call toothpaste, toothpaste. They call it Colgate (pronounced Colga-the).”
She refers to the Saturday morning cleaning ritual every Latine kid grew up experiencing – having their Latina mom wide awake at the crack of dawn with Fabuloso on deck and Latin music blasting in the background, making every kid in the house join in on the chores.
“It was super authentic and organic to who I am to the cultura,” she says. “I think that when I posted my reel on Instagram, the comments are literally everybody being like, ‘Yes, this is who we are.’ That we feel represented in this campaign, and I think that means so much that when we do things for Hispanic Heritage Month, that it’s done in a way that is authentic and true to who we are.”
Another thing Bailon is prioritizing this Latine Heritage Month is sharing her family’s immigration story – a journey that not only fueled her career but also shaped the family values she lives by.
“My dad actually immigrated to the United States when he was in his 40s and came from Ecuador to New York,” she says. “He got here to sing – to become a singer in a band that was performing in Flushing, Queens. You know there’s mad Ecuadorians in Queens!”
Today, Bailon is amazed by her father’s courage in coming to the United States in search of a better life: “I ask my dad all the time, like, ‘Papi, how did you do that?’ I cannot imagine.”
“I can’t imagine picking up and going to a country that speaks a different language and starting a whole new life,” she continues. “The courage that takes is just unreal, and I’m so grateful that he did that. That impacted my life in the fact that one, I’m here, and two, that I love that I grew up in a Spanish-speaking home. We only spoke Spanish at home.”
“I can’t imagine picking up and going to a country that speaks a different language and starting a whole new life.”
Bailon’s mother’s family’s immigration story, meanwhile, fueled her passion for representation in entertainment. Her mom, a first-generation Puerto Rican, was raised by a mother who left the island for New York, worked in garment factories, and first lived in a Chelsea tenement before moving the family to the projects on the Lower East Side.
“When Latina magazine first launched, I remember that being a really big deal to my mom,” Bailon says. “I remember seeing Jennifer Lopez on the cover of Vogue and my mom crying about it and her explaining to me, ‘You don’t get it, growing up we never would’ve thought there would come a day where we are being represented and not just represented but celebrated.'”
That’s also why Bailon’s family was so supportive of her own dreams.
“My mother has always been proud of me. My mom is not just proud of me because I’m successful and on TV or because I do music. If I were working at your local bodega, my mom would [still] be wildly proud of that,” she says. “Having that as a foundation allowed me to soar and allowed me to go for things because I wasn’t afraid of failure. It encouraged me to pursue my dreams fearlessly because I had this rock-solid foundation of a family that I knew loved me and encouraged me that even if this didn’t work out, I was going to be just fine. I still had my family.”
Still, it wasn’t easy to support those dreams. Her parents made numerous sacrifices to enable her to join 3LW when she was just a teenager.
“I think for my mom, the biggest sacrifice was letting me leave. I think the greatest sacrifice was that at 15, 16 years old, my mom actually gave guardianship over me to my manager because we were going to be traveling. If there was an emergency, they had to have parental guardianship over me,” Bailon says. “And I think that going to a court and signing that, oh my gosh, that was heartbreaking for my mom – like traumatic low-key.”
Decades later, she shares her story with pride because she believes that now more than ever, we need to hear more stories like hers.
“The main thing I want people to take away from my family story is the things that my mom instilled in me as being first-generation in this country: Hard work. Pride,” she says. “And not just pride in who we are, but pride in the way that we’re viewed.”
Now, raising her own 3-year-old son, Ever, she’s learning how to pass that pride down to the next generation. “We are very intentional about only speaking to him in Spanish at home,” she shares. “Ever only speaks Spanish. He’s now just learning English, and he has a little accent.”
Bailon goes on to say that she knows that as he makes more friends and goes to school, he’ll end up speaking more English. But it’s been important to her to raise him bilingual.
“It’s important to me that he knows Spanish. That’s the thing that really connects us to our culture, and that’s something I’m holding onto,” she adds.
Teaching her son Spanish, Bailon explains, isn’t just about language – though that’s especially significant today in a time where this country is trying to do away with the Spanish language. For her, it’s about giving him roots, a sense of pride in where he comes from. It’s the same intention she recognizes in the generations before her, a thread of culture and identity that has always been passed down in her family, particularly from her maternal grandmother, whose fierce orgullo and pride in being Latina and Boricua continues to inspire Bailon today.
“I remember growing up in the projects and my grandmother would get secondhand things and I remember that it would be great quality. That was important to her,” she shares. “She would take such pride in what she looked like, how she presented herself, and even if we were poor, our house was going to be so clean you can eat off of our floors.”
“We are going to present ourselves in a clean manner. We’re going to be hardworking,” she continues. “We’re going to show up to work 30 minutes early. We are going to be the last ones to leave. We are going to come through with excellence in everything that we do, and I think that I really appreciate that my mom and my grandma instilled that in me and that kind of pride, that kind of work ethic, no one can take that away from you.”
Johanna Ferreira is the content director for PS Juntos. With more than 10 years of experience, Johanna focuses on how intersectional identities are a central part of Latine culture. Previously, she spent close to three years as the deputy editor at HipLatina, and she has freelanced for numerous outlets including Refinery29, Oprah magazine, Allure, InStyle, and Well+Good. She has also moderated and spoken on numerous panels on Latine identity.
