Line

They're talking about salsa and merengue, the songs the "old heads" like, the ones that get them out on the dance floor.

"You know she be jammin' to that in her car, when she's cleaning on Saturdays, with the mapo"

"She's from Puerto Rico; she's a hick. So you know she does."

And there it is, the line is drawn, the us-them divide, the island-mainland divide. To these kids - second, third, fourth generation Philly Ricans - I am the island. I was born in Puerto Rico, I eat the food, listen to the music, believe in the language.

But on the island? On the island, I'm so mainland. Shoes too casual, hair too wild, speaking English much too easily.

The familiarity of the push and pull invades. It's all in lighthearted fun, but my heart aches for the homeland I've lost, for the land which will never really be my own. And my heart aches also for the tightrope, for its existence, and for those who live on it - men and women like me who are neither here nor there.

But here's the thing: lately my heart aches most for those who live on either side of that divide, those who are safely island, safely mainland, because they will never know the sweetness of Spanglish - true Spanglish - on the tongue. They will never know the relief of return on both ends of the flight that links the two places. Those on the island will never know the way it feels to wake up in the morning aching for the tropical heat and salty air, la nostalgia aguda que forma el carácter e inspira el corazón. Those on the mainland will never know what it feels like to live in perpetual summer, to live as part of a unit instead of wandering alone; nunca reconocerán el destino y la mano de Dios de la misma manera que la vemos los de la isla.

So I'm a hick - the island Puerto Rican - and at the same time I'm la americana.

And today, looking at my students, pondering the unique situation of the third generation of Brown folks, I felt grateful for my place on the tightrope.

And they're right: I do jam to some salsa in my car.

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.

Songs that make me feel pretty

Forget María's catchy little ditty from West Side Story. These are the songs that make me feel better about myself when I'm feeling less than gorgeous or when I'm just in a funk.

1. "Unpretty" by TLC

About finding that inner strength when you're hit with the idea that you're less than the ideal. The actual video (linked in title) is stellar.

2. "Yo no soy esa mujer" by Paulina Rubio

Have I ever mentioned the fact that I was on the same plane as La Chica Dorada when I flew back from Chile to Miami? Because I walked right past her and thought, "Dang that's an ugly coat! But she looks kinda familiar...." It wasn't until we'd all gotten through customs that I realized who she was. Anyway, this song. "Yo no soy esa mujer que no sale de casa...." A song for the tough girl refusing to be relegated to a life of domesticity - read, me.

3. "Just Fine" by Mary J. Blige

"I like what I see when I'm looking at me when I'm walking past the mirror." Always classy and confident. Love! (Click title for the full song)

4. "Video" by India Arie

It's a classic. &heart

5. "Señora de las cuatro décadas" by Ricardo Arjona

Because no one does sexy imperfections in a song like Arjona. Another classic.

6. "Superwoman" by Alicia Keys

It's a no brainer, really. I remember having this one on repeat while I willed myself to believe it during a particularly rough period, not going to lie.

7. "Who I Am" by Jessica Andrews

Love it!

8. "Piel canela" by La Sonora Matancera and Bobby Capó

Let's hear it for this cinnamon skin! Also, it's hard to feel bad while listening to cha-cha-cha.

9. "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield

Cheesy Europop? Check. Clichés galore? Check. Catchiness? Double check. And I love it unabashedly.

10. "Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley

Don't worry about a thing, cause every little thing is gonna be alright.

NaNoWriMo

I was five when I read my first novel, all by myself. Yes, it was a children's novel, but it was a NOVEL, not a picture book. That was the year that I fell head over heels with reading, and by extension, writing.

And, because I don't have enough to do as it is, I may have just signed up for National Novel Writing Month. Because the idea of writing for fun is appealing, because writing is one of the ways that I can de-stress after a day of dealing with students and wedding plans, because it feels so liberating to think that I can just WRITE about anything without any pressure. So, there. I told the internet. That means I have to do it.

Aaaaand, if you're as much a nerd as I am, go sign 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.

I think I just fell in love

With these shoes.

Which I am NOT ALLOWED to buy, just because I need boots more than I need another pair of fabulous pumps.

*sigh* Heartbreak.