Soundtrack - Good stuff

Because it's been ages since I've done one of these.

Here are the old(ish) songs I still think kick:


Here Comes the Hotstepper by Ini Kamoze

I can't understand most of it, but I love it. Also, I watched this video incessantly one summer when I was in Puerto Rico. I think I was eleven.


"Under the Bridge" by The Red Hot Chili Peppers

Even at ten I knew this song was amazing. A.May.Zing.

"You'll Think of Me" by Keith Urban

Not old enough to be a classic, but not new enough to be cool. Of course, it is country so cool is debatable. In my world, it's cool.

"Inevitable" by Shakira

This is the Shaki I fell in love with. Yeah, yeah, she sings in English now, but this stuff was so fabulous.

"Octavo día" by Shakira

I mean, as long as we're talking about her....

"Querida" by Juan Gabriel

This is the sound of family dinners at my house circa 1988.

"Crossroads" by Bone Thugs and Harmony

This was absolutely NOT played at dinner at my house, but it's still a good song.

"Unpretty" by TLC

I still need this song to get me through those ugly days.

"Waterfalls" by TLC

Gosh these girls were so great!

"Ordinary People" by John Legend

I love him. That is all.

"Burbujas de amor" by Juan Luis Guerra

This man is a poet.

"Maldita Suerte" by Víctor Manuelle and Sin Bandera

Another one that's in that in between - not old enough and not new enough.

"Good Life" by Kanye West

This song still makes me happy.

"No te veo" by Casa de Leones

Listen to this and TRY not to dance.

"Collide" by Howie Day

I don't know what it is, I just love this song.

Quotable

I've been meaning to post something like this for a while, but I haven't gotten around to it until now.

My students are hilarious. Sometimes on purpose, and sometimes unintentionally, and they give me enough fodder to tell stories for days and days, so here are some of my favorite student quotes from this year.

1. L. (after wiping black marker off a white board with her hands): I'm all black.
B. (an African-American student): It's a privilege.

2. E.: Miss, you too serious. Do you have any friends?
Me (sarcastically and dramatically): No. None at all.
E.: Do you have any pets?
Me (Still dramatic and sarcastic): Nope.
E.: Do you have a husband?
Me (Even more dramatically): Nope. I go home and I don't talk at all until I come to work the next day.
Y. (looking concerned): For REAL Miss?!

3. While working on an example of a poem that they would have to write in class -
Me: What's something I might do over the summer?
Student: Swim!
Student: Go outside!
L.: Sell hotdogs!
Whaaaaaaa?!

4. C.: Miss, do you talk about us when you go home? Do you tell stories about us?
Yes, kiddies. I tell the Internet.

5. The day of parent-teacher conferences - J: Miss, my dad is coming; he's going to hit on you. (For the record, he did, but at least I was prepared! I flashed my ring like crazy.)

6. K.: Miss, you look nice today.
Me: I'm always scared when students tell me that. Does that mean that I don't look nice most days?
K.: Naw, Miss. You know how to dress; some teachers don't.
On a related note, I had parent-teacher conferences last night, and parents are funny, too:

1. Me: S. is doing really well; he has an A, but he talks a lot in class, and I had to give him two days of detention because he was disrupting class.
S. Sr.: I thought he had detention; he told me he was cleaning for community service hours.
So busted!

2. Me: C. has brought his grade up from an F to a C. He's been coming in for tutoring and is working really hard. I'm really proud of him.
C.'s mom: Me too. He's getting a milkshake!

The best part, though, was the mom who told me that her daughter hated speaking Spanish before my class and now she goes home and wants them to speak to her in Spanish. "She wants to send texts in Spanish and she watches movies in Spanish with her dad." I will not lie, I teared up.

On language, Part 2

So this is the promised second part. I guess when I said Saturday, I meant Monday; it's been hectic.

My students in VA called them chents, my students here call them "hicks" for some reason that I still can't understand, but basically, there's a distinction between those Latinos who speak English and those who don't. Worse, there's a distinction between those who speak English and do and those who can and choose Spanish. Choosing Spanish, it seems, is just as bad as not speaking English. It breaks my heart to see how often my kids want to downplay what they know, how they want to cover up the fact that they do actually speak Spanish, for fear of being labeled any of the above terms, which, if you didn't know, are negative.

I expect the resistance from those on the outside, but the rejection by those who look like me is a sharper sting. I've spent a life building up the protective layers for the former, but the latter still surprises me. We might share ethnic or even national ties, but it's that damn LANGUAGE issue that trips us up. Within the community there's a recognition that the Spanish language gives you greater authenticity as a member, but at the same time, it's ENGLISH that gives you the cachet. So we downplay el español and play up that English, and pretend that's not the same form of self-hatred that prompts us to stay out of the sun and straighten our hair and diet our hips away.

That Guillén poem, though, just blows my mind. Here it is again:

PROBLEMAS DEL SUBDESARROLLO

Monsieur Dupont te llama inculto,
porque ignoras cuál era el nieto
preferido de Víctor Hugo.

Herr Müller se ha puesto a gritar,
porque no sabes el día
(exacto) en que murió Bismark.

Tu amigo Mr. Smith,
inglés o yanqui, yo no lo sé,
se subleva cuando escribes shell.
(Parece que ahorras una ele,
y que además pronuncias chel.)

Bueno ¿y qué?
Cuando te toque a ti,
mándales decir cacarajícara,
y que donde está el Aconcagua,
y que quién era Sucre,
y que en qué lugar de este planeta
murió Martí.

Un favor:
Que te hablen siempre en español.

I love this. First off, the title: Problems of "Underdevelopment" - Third World problems. And guess what? The problems are not corruption or lack of clean water or terribly deficient educational systems. The problems are that the French think we're uncivilized because we don't know the minor details of French literary history, that the Germans get angry because we don't know about their historical figures, and that the Brits and US Americans are annoyed with the way we speak and write their language. It's that familiarity of being looked down on for the language we speak.
Ah, but the catch: We can ask them to say tongue twisting words, to point out some geography, to identify a historical figure, and to give us some details on Latin American literary history. And the other catch? Do it in Spanish. We're always playing along, adopting the other's language - it's exhausting and exasperating. We are just as educated, cultured, relevant. And guess what? So is our language.

Whether we've been here for five weeks, five years, or five generations, we have to learn to respect the humanity of those who don't speak English and those who do but choose to love and cherish Spanish as well. There's an element of dehumanization in disrespecting languages, I think. If I can't understand you, then you aren't as much a person as I am. And that's dangerous.

On language, Part 1

I've been thinking a lot about the idea of the perceived superiority of the English language and the implications that has on identity and self-esteem and racial/ethnic tensions. This is not to say that I have my thoughts "together", but that it's been floating around a lot.
I'm teaching Spanish again, my first language, and one that I love now, so I'm always thinking about language, the politics of language, and the connection between language and Latino identity. This past spring during my Cross-Cultural Skills class, I started thinking of how I identify as a speaker of Spanish in public places.
I love to speak Spanish in public for several reasons, though I won't deny that one of them is just that it makes some people uncomfortable. Is that terrible? I'm not trying to be mean, and believe, I'm most certainly NOT talking about you, I'm just pushing the envelope on what's acceptable for a middle-class, well-educated, young woman who's spent most of her life in the United States. I mean, it's understandable when recent arrivals speak their languages in public, but it's somehow less accepted for someone who's been here since the age of four to do the same. If you speak English, why speak Spanish?
For me, the answer is simple: my family speaks Spanish. My aunts, my uncles, my grandparents, my cousins, my parents - they all speak Spanish. With few exceptions, that's all they speak, and I love them and want to communicate with them. Too easy, right? Right. Because that doesn't explain why I speak Spanish at the grocery store and on the street when I'm with bilingual folks. Spanish allows me to express myself in ways that I can't in English. There's a musicality to it, a reassuring structure, an identification of the nuances of gender and class and age built into the very foundations of the language. Not to mention the loveliness of words like "desahogarse" and "humildad" and "bendito". There are ideas that can't be translated, links and connections between states of being that can't be as fully expressed in English because it would require two nouns and a conjunction. There's always something lost in translation.
Spanish is beautiful, so rich and layered and homey. Algo cómodo y a la vez lleno de vida y pasión. I admit that I am smitten with accent marks, arching gracefully over vowels, coaxing my tongue into proper pronunciation.
But this has not always been my attitude towards my first language.
There was a time when I felt that Spanish was the language of lesser intelligence; a time when it marked me as a child who might need extra help. I was ashamed of my heritage and that came out in hatred towards my mother tongue.
It wasn't a conscious shame, but rather a subtly internalized sense of inferiority passed down by well-meaning clueless teachers, folks at the store who looked at me with mixed suspicion and pity, and curious but insensitive classmates. Poor little brown girl, with her inferior skin, inferior language, and (logically) inferior brain. Which is not what they were literally thinking, but in a world where White, English-speaking men are the standard, I do not measure up.
And so English became my defense; it let people know that I was, indeed, smart. See how well I speak your language?

It wasn't until high school, when I started to develop a real sense of ethnic identity, that I brushed off my Spanish and wore it as a badge. It was a sign of how "truly Puerto Rican" I am, which, really, what does that MEAN?! Apparently, in my head, it meant speaking Spanish. And I'm glad it did, because once I got over the greater part of my militancy, I just fell in love with the language, with the way it feels in my mouth, with the incredible diversity of it, and the myriad influences which have shaped it. And have I mentioned the PRACTICALITY of Spanish? It's one the top three most spoken languages in the world, and the United States actually has the second largest Spanish-speaking population in the world. (Which is why I'm not talking about you when I speak Spanish in public. I know better.) It has served me well, allowing me to communicate with people from all walks of life, opening doors for me when it comes to jobs, and giving me the opportunity to read Neruda and García Márquez as they are meant to be read: en español.

But there still seems to be a stigma associated with the language. I notice it all the time in overt and subtle ways, and I'll get into those later, tomorrow or Saturday. But for now, a poem from my favorite poet: Nicolás Guillén:

PROBLEMAS DEL SUBDESARROLLO

Monsieur Dupont te llama inculto,
porque ignoras cuál era el nieto
preferido de Víctor Hugo.

Herr Müller se ha puesto a gritar,
porque no sabes el día
(exacto) en que murió Bismark.

Tu amigo Mr. Smith,
inglés o yanqui, yo no lo sé,
se subleva cuando escribes shell.
(Parece que ahorras una ele,
y que además pronuncias chel.)

Bueno ¿y qué?
Cuando te toque a ti,
mándales decir cacarajícara,
y que donde está el Aconcagua,
y que quién era Sucre,
y que en qué lugar de este planeta
murió Martí.

Un favor:
Que te hablen siempre en español.

Palabras

Son los que uno más aprecia que más nos lastiman. Son los que dicen querernos, los que dicen ser nuestros amigos hasta el fin que menos lo son.

Ya no quiero palabras.

No quiero que me digan mil cosas sin actuar.

Lo digo por varias razones, no te me asustes.

Me sacas de tu vida, me abres las puertas a tu vida, me dices que soy tu vida, me dices que no seré tu vida.

Ya.

No quiero seguir nutriéndome de palabras. Si me amas, enséñamelo. Si eres mi amigo, enséñamelo. Si soy tu vida, enséñamelo. Si no lo soy, enséñamelo.

Estoy luchando. Por el aire, por cada latido de mi corazón, por controlar estas lágrimas, luchando. Y si no me darán la gracia, la paciencia, el tiempo, que necesito, pues ¿qué más da?

Ayer

Took a long walk with Rae-Rae yesterday. Saw a white tailed deer cross the path we were walking through the woods - this crashing through brush, a flash of tan, a leap across the gravel, a white tail, and gone. It was pretty surreal.

We walked a little over four miles, all the way down my street and back with a detour through the woods until the path meets the road on the other side of Lake Ridge Park. Down at the end of the street, I looked up and saw a hawk. I'm not usually a nature girl, really I'm not, but there was something in that moment that clicked. And the following started coming to me then.

Today, I went for a shorter walk with Rae-Rae, saw a feather on the path in the woods, remembered my hawk, and thought that I had to come home and finish this one. It started out differently in my head, kind of took off in a different direction once I started writing. That happens sometimes. Must've been what I actually needed to tell myself.... Ah, and to the non-Spanish speakers, my apologies - this came to me in Spanish. What can I say? I can't keep languages straight in my head....

Ayer - historia de un vuelo

Ayer lo vi.
Ayer, domingo, aunque él no lo sabía.
Lo vi con las alas estrechadas
flotando sobre las corrientes de aire que yo
jamás conoceré.
Lo vi y en ese momento,
con el viento fresco de otoño molestándome los ojos,
sentí una nostalgía tan profunda.
Nostalgía casi inapropiada
porque nunca he conocido lo que se siente
allá.
Arriba.
Lejos de todo, de todos, de la gravedad que me mantiene aquí
estancada.

Pero en ese momento, viéndolo flotando
sin mover esas alas enormes,
qué celos me han entrado.
Es lo único que anhelo.
Lo único que anhelé ayer, lo único que sigo anhelando:
flotar
sobre esas mismas corrientes de aire
sentir ese vientecito molestándome los ojos y llorar sin pena sabiendo
que allá nadie me verá.
Nadie me dirá que
sobreviviré.
Que saldré de ésta.
Que puedo encontrar algo - alguien - mejor.

A él nadie le dice eso.
Cuando viene ese viento
a agitarle las lágrimas, él las puede soltar
sin pena alguna.
Qué libertad plena.

Ayer lo vi
y mi alma se encogió, adolorida por el anhelo,
la nostalgía,
los celos.

Lo quise seguir hasta allá
hasta el cielo inmenso, azul y frío
en esta época (noviembre, el mes más solitario de todos),
y volar.
Volar, volar, volar hasta escaparme de su recuerdo,
hasta escaparme de mi debilidad tan obvia y vergonzosa,
hasta escaparme del dolor que me ahoga.

Y mientras volara, lloraría.
¿Lloraría?
¿Al frente de tal libertad?
¿Lloraría?

Quizás no.
No, no.
Solamente me quedaría volar para
poder aprender a respirar
nuevamente,
para aprender a querer nuevamente,
para aprender a ser
igualita a él.

Ayer lo vi.
Y hoy me sostiene ese recuerdo.
Estoy estrechando alas metafóricas,
flotando sobre corrientes que me suben y me bajan.

Sobreviviré.
Eso lo supe desde un principio.
Pero lo que quiero no es sobrevivir, sino
vivir.

Vivir en una libertad plena.
Respirando profundamente del aire que me sostiene
sin importarme lo que me digan.
Si me toma meses de supervivencia para
que llegue la vida, que así sea.
Días, meses, años
- ay, Diosito mío, que no sean años -
de supervivencia, esperaré.

Porque estas alas algún día me
llevarán lejos de aquí.
Flotaré.
Escaparé.
Viviré.
Como lo anhelé ayer.