Gloria Estefan is a Fem Friday icon. I’ve got Pat Green to thank for helping me remember just how iconic she really is. I asked him if he had ever considered writing about her. He said he had a rough draft and notes on her-as well as other women from the 80s. I asked him for the draft. Instead he sent me his research. A mountain of research! Interviews, charts, speeches, and receipts. Then he said, “You need to tell her story in your voice, Heather. This one’s yours.”
So I lit a candle, put on “Coming Out of the Dark,” and sat down to write something that ultimately says, you belong here.
This one’s for you. The immigrant girls. The trauma survivors. The “different” children of homophobic mothers. The ones who weren’t supposed to survive, let alone shine. Gloria Estefan didn’t just survive. She danced through the fire and then gave the rest of us the rhythm to rise.
From Havana to the World
Gloria’s journey started in Cuba, but her story is woven into the fabric of American music. Born in 1957, she and her family fled Havana after the revolution. Her father had been a bodyguard for President Batista and later served in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War just like many immigrants today have served America in the military only to be rewarded with a one way plane trip to El Salvador with no due process.
She entered America as a child to a country that didn’t want her. Gloria remembers seeing signs that read: “No Children, No Pets, No Cubans.” That’s the America she grew up in.
Music was her therapy and her pushback! She sang. For hours. Alone in her room with a guitar, letting music become the way she processed grief, isolation, and rage. Sound familiar? Yeah. That part of her story hit me right in the chest.
Fast Forward-1985 Miami Sound Machine
In 1985, Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine dropped “Conga,” and the music world changed. It was the first song to appear on Billboard’s pop, dance, Black, and Latin charts simultaneously. Her next album, Let It Loose, gave us four Top 10 hits and basically proved that a bilingual Cuban woman could own American pop without diluting her identity.
She didn’t just get famous. She made a whole country move to the beat of a culture they tried to erase.
The Crash, the Pain, the Return
Then came the crash.
In March 1990, Gloria’s tour bus was struck by a semi-truck. She fractured her spine. Metal rods were placed in her back. Doctors weren’t sure she’d walk again. And like the survivor she is, she stood up at a press conference just days after surgery and said she’d be back at 100%.
Less than a year later, she released “Coming Out of the Dark.”
That song is not just a comeback track. It’s a prayer. A declaration. A battle cry wrapped in melody. It’s what I’ve played on repeat when I’ve needed to remind myself that crawling out of trauma doesn’t mean you have to do it silently.
When she rose, it gave the rest of us the model to rise too no matter who broke our proverbial backs.
Culture Keeper and Border Breaker
When Pat showed me the press clippings, the Grammy stats, and the quotes that Gloria’s dropped over the years, I saw her even more clearly. This woman wasn’t just breaking records, she was building bridges. Mi Tierra wasn’t just a Grammy-winning album in 1993; it was a love letter to her heritage. She called it “totally roots-oriented,” and said her goal was to promote Cuban culture globally.
And she didn’t stop there. In 2007, she released 90 Millas. Named for the distance from Key West to Cuba this was a record drenched in Cuban sounds and defiance. She insisted on authenticity, saying, “It is so important for me to keep authentic Cuban sounds alive.” That’s not nostalgia. That’s resistance.
Gloria’s crossover wasn’t a fluke. It was a fight. She opened doors for Latin artists who came after her: Shakira, Ricky Martin, Camila Cabello, Bad Bunny, and others. NPR said Let It Loose didn’t just succeed; it “helped create a market” for Latin music in the U.S. She didn’t just ride a wave. She was the wave.
And she never forgot where she came from or who she was doing it for.
What Pat’s research reminded me is that Gloria never played the assimilation game. She kept singing in Spanish on American TV. She wore her Cuban identity proudly. She didn’t apologize for where she came from. She celebrated it.
How many of us assimilate and accommodate the male world and apologize for who we are?
She once said, “You can become a citizen of this wonderful nation and still keep who you are: your culture, your lifestyle.”
Read that again. Still keep who you are.
That’s the lesson, right? That being yourself doesn’t mean shedding your skin. It means stitching your story into the fabric of this place. And Gloria embroidered hers with percussion, poetry, and pride.
Why She’s My Fem Friday Hero
Gloria Estefan isn’t just a singer. She’s a survivor. She’s an immigrant who refused to be invisible. She’s a woman who took her pain and made it sacred. And she’s proof that you don’t have to fit in to lead.
When I think about who Pat lifted up on Fem Friday, it’s not just the loudest voices or the flashiest moments. It’s the women who change the room simply by walking into it and daring to stay. That’s Gloria. She kicked down the door and left it open for others.
So turn on “Conga” when you want to move. Turn on “Coming Out of the Dark” when you need to heal. And remember Gloria Estefan when someone tells you to tone it down.
Celebrating women like Gloria means nothing if we don’t also commit to doing the work. Like I wrote last week (and the hate mail was delicious! I thought he was exaggerating about the hate mail he gets!), feminism is not going to move forward unless we are intentionally intersectional. That means we center and uplift all voices, not just the ones that look like us and make us comfortable. Immigrant women, queer women, trans women, women with disabilities, women of color. We are all part of this movement. And until we are all safe, none of us are.
Immigrants are in danger. Women are in danger. Our trans sisters are in danger. And if we don’t show up for each other, loudly and unapologetically, we lose the very soul of what feminism is supposed to be.
Gloria Estefan showed us how to fight with grace. How to lead with culture. How to heal with rhythm. Let’s take that energy and use it to build something stronger together.
Celebrate women. Protect women. All women.
That’s the only future worth marching toward.
See you next Friday!
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