Actress Zoe Saldana on September 24, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (2015 Getty Images)
Zoe Saldaña is making a huge and conscious effort to raise her sons as the multicultural boys that they are.
During the latest episode of her YouTube series “Rosé Round Table with Zoe Saldaña” – in which the "Star Trek" actress gets together with a group of women to eat and drink wine and talk about some topic or the other, in this instance on what it means to be an American – said that it’s important for her and husband Marco Perego instill their roots in the upbringing of their sons, Bowie and Cy.
“My husband is an immigrant, I’m a first-generation immigrant,” Saldaña, 38, said. “It is a necessity for us to raise our children with our roots so that they can communicate with their grandparents, but also so that they can create some kind of empathy for human beings that do not look like them and do not sound like them and do not smell like them.”
The mother of two – who was joined by her sisters Mariel and Cisely as well as three women from the millennial mom lifestyle brand, Awestruck – said she feels she has to push their children out of their comfort zones and urge them to “seek the world.”
“To want to know what’s out there besides the comfort of your block,” she said, adding: “America still holds the first spot in my heart. I love going back to all the routes that we are from, from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico, going back to the Middle East.”
Saldaña, who is of Dominican descent, recalled with that she and her sisters vowed to speak Spanish to their kids – something she has spoken about in the past.
“We had all made these promises when we were growing up as first-generations Latinas, that we’d speak Spanish the way we spoke Spanish,” she said in the video. “But you don’t realize as you’re saying, ‘We’re going to speak Spanish,’ that you’re not saying, ‘Vamos a hablar Español.’”
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