What Watching TV Together Taught Me About Being Dominican (Op-Ed)

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 moments. I remember the television glowing in the corner while dinner was being prepared in the kitchen. Spanish came through the speakers, competing with the clatter of pots and pans, family conversations, and the occasional argument over who got to choose the channel. More often than not, it was a toss-up between Univision and Telemundo.

I remember Marimar, starring Thalía and Eduardo Capetillo—my first TV crush—playing on the screen. I remember weekends with Sábado Gigante and Don Francisco, a show we looked forward to all week. I remember watching Selena perform and replaying her interviews and music videos because my family never seemed ready to let those moments go.

Something powerful about hearing Spanish spoken in our home. Even when the stories weren’t specifically Dominican, they still felt familiar. The expressions, family dynamics, music, humor, and larger-than-life personalities reflected pieces of a culture we instinctively recognized.

Watching Marimar with my family was never quiet. My mom would shake her head at a character’s bad decision, and someone else would immediately say, “¡Te dije que eso iba a pasar!” Soon, the room would fill with overlapping voices, laughter, teasing, and arguments over who was right.

It was the same energy I knew from my Dominican family gatherings: adults laughing at old stories and debating everything from family gossip to what was happening on television. Someone was always calling from another room, and somehow everyone was part of the conversation. The show didn’t tell our exact story, but watching it with my mom and the rest of my family felt like home.

Marimar wasn’t a Dominican show, and Selena was Mexican American. But culture doesn’t always come through direct representation. Sometimes, it comes through recognition.

At the time, I didn’t think of those evenings as cultural preservation. I was just a kid growing up in New Jersey, watching television with my family. Decades later, I realize those ordinary moments were teaching me who I was and where I came from.

For many immigrant families, broadcast media was more than entertainment. It was a bridge between the world our parents left behind and the one we were growing up in. For my Dominican family, it helped us hold on to language, music, humor, and a connection to home while building a life in the United States.

That was the magic of appointment television. We watched because a show was on, and it became part of our family conversation because we’d seen it together. I could speak English at school and come home to a living room filled with Spanish, growing up in New Jersey while still seeing pieces of Latin America and the Caribbean on screen. I didn’t have to choose between being Dominican and being from New Jersey—I could simply be both.

Even today, hearing the opening notes of Marimar brings back memories of those evenings with my family. But the way I watch television has changed. I no longer wait for a show to come on at a certain time or gather with my family to decide what we’re all going to watch. Now I stream shows on my own whenever I have time. When something makes me laugh or reminds me of home, I still share it with my family, usually through a clip or meme in our family group chat.

The connection remains, but it takes a different shape. When I was growing up, a telenovela, a performance on Sábado Gigante, or a song on television could become tomorrow’s family conversation without anyone planning it. Everyone had seen it. Everyone had an opinion. Today, with endless choices and personalized feeds, we may watch different shows, follow different creators, and discover culture in different ways. Shared cultural moments haven’t disappeared; they’ve become less automatic.

At the same time, Latino creators aren’t waiting to be represented; they’re creating that representation themselves. A Dominican kid in New Jersey can open their phone and find a community that reflects their experiences. I would never trade that access or the creative freedom creators have today.

But I also miss the feeling that we were all watching together.

The platforms have expanded from telenovelas and variety shows to TikTok, podcasts, YouTube, and streaming, but my desire for connection hasn’t 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 between two worlds, culture is passed down in more than the stories we tell about where our families came from. It lives in our language, recipes, music, and the ordinary moments we spend together.

For me, it lives in the memory of a television glowing in my New Jersey living room, filling our home with Spanish. I once thought those shows were simply entertainment. Now I understand that what shaped me wasn’t only what we watched, but watching it with my family.

We have more ways to connect to our culture than ever. The challenge is keeping those connections shared. Culture isn’t just something we consume; it’s something we experience, remember, and pass on.