Latin pop star Gloria Estefan has spoken about the complicated family dynamics around her daughter Emily‘s coming out. Estefan told CNN’s Chris Wallace about the fact that she was reluctant to allow Emily to come out to her late mother because it is such a “taboo” in the Latin community and the stress may have affected her health.
>WATCH: EMILY ESTEFAN’s uINTERVIEW NOW!
“In the Latin community, a lot of these subjects aren’t touched,” Estefan explained, though she assured viewers, “Emily, I thought, would feel comfortable coming out to me.”
She then later explained that her mother suffered from ulcerative colitis, and she “even if I brought up a bill–– or something that was not even important––would get very upset, and would get sick.”
This topic was first discussed on Red Table Talk: The Estefans, which is a continuation of the Facebook Watch talk series originated by Jada Pinkett-Smith.
In the 2020 episode, Emily said she was “really nervous” when first deciding to come out as queer to her mother Gloria. She also tearfully revealed that one of Gloria’s first reactions to the news was to say “If you tell your grandma, and she dies, her blood is on your hands.”
“That’s where my hurt started,” Emily added after sharing the story. “I’m never going to forget that.” Gloria responds to Emily in the video, “you’re remembering things, as we all tend to do, in a different way.” She referred to her mother as “controlling and set in her ways” and that she “would not even let us joke about sex.”
The mother and daughter also teamed up for the recently-released Estefan Family Christmas album.
