When my parents came over, I wasn’t expecting for the
following to ensue: my pops and wife
to be arguing over what language ought to be spoken in OUR home, and taught to
Luca, OUR son, nuestro hijo. At first
the visit was typical. My mamita dropping
off food and the abuelos getting to
know their grandson. Typical.
But my dad said something in English to his grandson, and my
wife responded jokingly, “en este casa,
hablamos espanol! Jaja, Luca no entiende ingles [in this house we speak
Spanish! Luca doesn’t understand English]. We [my mamita and I] laughed. My dad with a smile responded, “Yina, you
know when Tino was 5 or 6 years old his teacher came to us and yelled at us
because he didn’t speak any English. She said, ‘Mr. Diaz do you know where your
boy is heading if he doesn’t learn English? Nowhere!’ I believe she was right.
It would have been confusing for him. I didn’t want him growing up with an
accent. I didn’t want him being discriminated. I didn’t want people hating him
because of how he sounded. She was Puerto Rican too.” Mamita adds, “Peor que sea Latina tambien” [she just had to be
Latina too]—my Mom was always opposed to and never followed our English-only household policy.
Instantly, my wife and father go at it--when I say go at it, I mean the culturally relevant notion that WE as Caribbean Latinos associate the meaning of an argument, LOUD but not angry, and if angry not that Western kinda' angry. My father defends his nativist strategy for survival on behalf of his two-generations down posterity; my wife, responding with her own ESL experiences and unloading about 4 semesters worth of graduate work with English Language Learner research and study. The point that struck me in their
argument, with my mamita in the
corner spurring on my wife and shouting a “Si” and “Mira,” backing my wife up,
was when my wife said “And look at your son, a man who looks Latino but can’t
speak like one. A man who wishes more than anything to communicate with his own
people, but feels like he can’t!”
It stunned me…
There was a moment of silence before they further explored
the many-nuanced subject of language acquisition and identity. She was so right
that it hurt. It wasn’t intentional, of course. It was more out of love than
accusation; more out of experiential warning than blame. It was the love of a
parent and spouse that understood the past injustice of language and racism,
nativism and education, and wanted her son equipped for these same struggles,
not ill-prepared.
I supported my wife on this one. I had to. It isn’t just
that traditional spousal agreement that we non-verbally consent to—to back up
each other’s debates. But what she said hurt because it was true. Language for
me had always been an issue. I never truly felt “Latino” because I never spoke
like a “Latino,” I never spoke Spanish. When I was/am given the opportunity to
speak I usually freeze up. I get nervous. My words leave or I stutter, and words
repeat themselves in 3 to 7 cycles. As I talk, these same words feel like
weights, each pronunciation like a 45 lb. steel-plate dampening the chords of my identity.
I’m somewhat good now, pretty good. What did it take? A lot
of listening and shame-filled practice. It’s all good. It had to be that way.
It used to make me so angry—still does—whenever Mormon missionaries at the
Spanish congregations in Church I’d attend scoff when I would respond in
English to them. They said, “Haha, hermano solamente hablamos espanol aqui.”
“Screw you” I used to think. Screw all of you. Whiteboys that think they know
my own language better than I do—but they did, and that’s the hard part—and
comfortable, sometimes in jest when they err with no critique: “Elder, esta bien” they would all say, comforting the Elder or
Sister missionary that made a mistake, “aprender
otro idioma es dificil.” When I make a mistake, in my own language critiqued
by my own community, I am the welcomed recipient of perplexed looks and
sympathetic but poetically disguised pats on the shoulder. No words.
But you have to understand the position my dad comes from.
You see there’s a context to why he feels the Uncle Tom way he does. My mamita came to this country in her early
20’s. My dad came in the beginning of his high school years to Brooklyn, NY
from La Ceiba, Honduras. In high school he was surrounded by young Black and
Puerto Rican bodies that did not speak Spanish and that terrorized him because
that was all he knew. His barrio slaughtered
him. Roughed him up and created that tiny stick of terror that I now know as
Dad. Homie, literally grew up in the school of Hardknocks and graduated. My mom
once told me about a group of Italian dudes that chased him all the way home
screaming racial slurs because they heard him talking on the phone as he walked
back from work, I was at home and barely born. So I understood why he said
these things, why he believed them. There was context and I can’t hide or
ignore that. It’s often the reason why our people—and I use the term “OUR”
loosely because I don’t believe in essentialized configurations—are wedged in
colonial constructs that create a kind of lateral oppression. Get me right, I
don’t agree with my dad—not at all—but I understand given his narrative, weighted
around with context. We need to remember this.
In the end, my wife is right and so is my dad. It’s complicated
right? How about this: My wife has a great understanding and foresight about
where language and identity need to become addressed for the future, she sees a
position for language and identity in social justice (in the home), and my Dad
displays a context for what has occurred in the past and where we can start to
deconstruct and decolonize, he represents the background of society along with
its intersecting layers of oppression.
They both have much to contribute to the issue of language
and identity, oppression and society. I don’t look at my dad’s experience as
deficit, but as that of a young immigrant body seeking sense in a world that
alienated him. As for my wife, what more can I say except that she is the voice
of a future where families are no longer afraid to speak their native tongues
in their own spaces and harness the sustainability of their racial and cultural
legacies within their homes. Besides, she’s always right… J
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