For Latinos, language can be a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, mainstream America is telling us to assimilate, to forget about Spanish and to learn English in order to be successful. On the other hand, if you're Latino and you don't speak Spanish fluently, other Latinos, especially the older generations, make you feel like a traitor, a vendido, a sellout.
BOOK REVIEW
Telling Tongues: A Latin@ Anthology on Language Experience
Edited by Louis G. Mendoza and Toni Nelson Herrera; Calaca Press/Red Salmon Press, 224 pages, $15
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Some of us prefer to find a middle ground between English and Spanish – a safe zone where we can switch from one language to the other, sometimes without noticing it, in the same sentence.
While many people define Latino as a Spanish-speaking person, a new book recently published by National City's Calaca Press proves that there's a whole range of diverse experiences on language when it comes to the Latino community. In “Telling Tongues: A Latin@ Anthology on Language Experience,” edited by Louis G. Mendoza and Toni Nelson Herrera, 32 Latino writers share their experiences, positive and negative, with the wide array of languages they've encountered – from the formal, standard English found in an academic setting (many of the writers in the anthology have graduate degrees) to the Spanglish found in the streets of East Los Angeles; from the intimate, familiar sounds of Spanish at home to the different accents of English one can hear all over the U.S.
The book is divided into two sections: one for poetry and the other for prose, which includes fiction, creative nonfiction, personal essays and testimonios.
Through these texts, we can see that language for Latinos becomes a political, spiritual, ethnic, cultural, family and intimate issue – all at the same time. But the most common example that comes up in the book is that of the Latino who, for any reason, doesn't speak Spanish – or at least doesn't speak it fluently.
“You're Mexican and you don't know how to speak Spanish? I didn't say I didn't know. I said I wasn't great. And what kind of a question is that? Does she really expect me to answer? Or does she expect me to justify myself? Do I even have a choice?” writes Vida Mia García in “This Wild Tongue Tamed: A Memoir, a Eulogy, a Diatribe, a Prayer.”
One aspect of the book that gives a more realistic view of Latino life is that it is not only limited to the experiences of writers of Mexican descent, or Chicanos. Instead, it includes an array of voices from the Latino experience in the United States: Cubanos, Puertorriqueños, Panameños, Dominicanos, Españoles, Salvadoreños, and those from multiethnic backgrounds. There are “those moments when I feel neither fluent nor articulate enough to express anything in English nor in Spanish,” writes Panamanian-American Cecilia Isabel Mendez in “El teatro de la cocina/Drama of the Kitchen.” (Although there are three texts written by immigrant writers completely in Spanish, none of them was written by a Mexican.)
This book is great reading for those who are interested in a wide range of issues, from the bilingual education and English-only debate to the immigration experiences of recent immigrants, from the generation gap found in Latino families due to language to the psychological complexes language can create in a child.
In the poem “The First Day of School,” Joe Sainz writes about the language barriers a young immigrant boy encounters: I walk into a room full of nine-year-old strangers;/ The teacher comes near./ She welcomes me and motions me to sit;/ I don't understand what she says./ ... I hear meaningless words around me ... ” While some of the themes in the texts are repetitive (“I'm Latino and I don't speak Spanish. So what?”), “Telling Tongues: A Latino Anthology on Language Experience” highlights experiences similar to many Latinos who live and grow up in los Estados Unidos.
It is a great testimony of the power of language in our daily lives. And be sure to have a Spanish dictionary handy when reading the book. Or better yet: Pick up a Spanglish dictionary.
Pablo Jaime Sáinz is a contributor to Enlace, the Union-Tribune's Spanish-language newspaper.
