Actress Selenis Leyva and her 12-year-old daughter Alina attended the 21st Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at The Shrine Auditorium on January 25, 2015 in Los Angeles, California.
Leyva currently stars as Gloria Mendoza, the quick-witted Latina, in the comedy-drama hit series, Orange is the New Black. Selenis, who grew up in a half Cuban, half Dominican household in New York, is raising her daughter to be bilingual.
“My parents made it a point that although I was born and raised in New York City I needed to speak Spanish because they wanted me to be able to communicate with my elders when I went to Santo Domingo [or] when my family came to visit from Cuba. So we have some people who place a lot of importance on that and a lot who don’t,” she recently told Huffington Post.
“But you know I’m not one to criticize someone for speaking it or not. I, for one, do believe that we should speak the language of our ancestors and that’s why my daughter speaks fluent Spanish.”
You can catch Selenis on Season 3 of “Orange Is the New Black”, rumored to release on Netflix in June 2015.
