Richard Rodriguez: Bilingual Ed and Affirmative Action

In my Chicano/a Autobiography class (de Profesora Rebolledo) we are covering some very interesting material. We just read Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez, an author I had never heard of and now find fascinating in many ways. I had to present his life/work yesterday in class, and while doing research on him for the presentation, I found a video of a talk he did years ago on the importance of libraries and books. The topic didn't sound particularly interesting to me,but it was one of the most dynamic and intriguing speeches I've ever heard. If you know what he is known for, you may cringe. If you don't, it just so happens that he speaks out against bilingual education and Affirmative Action. Yes, it is a bit shocking that a Chicano/Mexican-American (what do these mean anyway??) speaks out against these programs, but after reading about his life and listening to his perspective, I am surprised to say that I partly agree with him. He makes some very valid points, and I think it's worth listening to him speak (and reading his books). The talk is about an hour but it's so interesting you won't even notice the time. That was my experience anyway! Let me know what you guys think. I find him incredibly fascinating because he's so controversial, and he makes me think about race, culture, identity and language in ways I hadn't before. Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz2wLvK9p9Q&ob=av3e

"esque habla mexicano"

Yesterday I saw one of my Nuevomexicano friends and I was reminded of an experience I had with his family when I was in middle school. I think his family was probably the reason why I became interested in New Mexican Spanish. My grandparents are from Belen, NM, so I had already had exposure to New Mexican Spanish, but since they had spent time in Mexico it was more “standard”. I recall finding it interesting that even though my friends mother claimed not to know Spanish she would always use Spanish words for certain things. For example I remember that she would always have us take or get stuff from the “cuartito”, never from the shed. One time she was sweeping and she asked me to get the… the… the thing that she couldn’t find a word for. So I said “I call a palita”, to my surprise, she laughed and said “that’s what we call it too. I remember having discussions with my friend and his parents (both Nuevomexicanos) about the differences and similarities between our cultures and our Spanish. I thought it was fascinating how they thought a tripa was a hose when, clearly, it’s an intestine. At that age, I began to form awareness of the variation of dialect amongst Nuevomexicanos and the Spanish that I had learned in Mexico. Perhaps my most interesting experience with my friends’ family was when I met his grandma, the cutest abuelita from old town Albuquerque that you could imagine and with all the attitude that you could possibly have. I distinctly remember my friend introducing me as being “Spanish” and he suggested I talk to her in Spanish. After a short conversation with her she turned to my friend and said “que bonito habla la lengua, esque habla mexicano”. At the time I was confused by that, I didn’t understand why speaking mexicano made my Spanish “pretty”.  Now I have a better understanding, she later told me that she didn’t like her Spanish because she was mocha. I share this last experience because I think it represents the stigma that New Mexican Spanish carries with it due to all the false stereotypes that have been attached to it.

Cuando era puertorriqueña

Cuando leí el artículo de Anderson y Toribio (2007) me di cuenta que cita Cuando era puertorriqueña de Esmeralda Santiago. Hace un tiempo leí esta novela de memorias en inglés (fue escrita en este idioma y después traducida al español) y me llamó la atención su manera de escribir puesto que la autora utiliza una gran cantidad de palabras en español. Recuerdo que en clase se hizo el comentario de por qué la autora no la escribió en español si es su primer idioma. Además algunas personas veían de manera negativa que ella mezclara el español y el inglés en la misma novela, asociando esto con una debilidad en su segundo idioma.

Me hubiera gustado haber tomado esta clase antes para poder entender y poder defender estos puntos de vista que estoy aprendiendo en clase. Creo que cuando no tenemos conocimiento de lo que es realmente algo tendemos a juzgarlo. Ahora que hemos estado hablando en clase sobre “los prestamos” me puedo dar cuenta de las razones por las cuales opta por escribir de esta manera. Creo que, como se ha mencionado de otras novelas semejantes, Esmeralda Santiago tropezó con dificultades para encontrar términos en inglés apropiados para los conceptos puertorriqueños que quería comunicar, sin embargo, esto me hace pensar que no se debe precisamente a una debilidad en el idioma inglés. Por el contrario, es necesario elogiarle su buen conocimiento de ambos idiomas. Creo que ella pudo darse cuenta que tiene la posibilidad de utilizar una palabra en español para poder transmitir al lector lo más cercano posible a lo que desea expresar: el ser bilingüe le da ese privilegio, esa opción.

También me hace recordar lo que habíamos mencionado a principios del semestre, cuando comentábamos de cuando se exigía que los estudiantes hablaran exclusivamente inglés en la escuela, y que en muchas ocasiones fueron castigados. En esta novela, Negi (Esmeralda Santiago) comienza a ir a una escuela en Brooklyn y ninguna de sus clases son en español. Al igual como continua sucediendo hoy en día, intentaron retrasarla un año debido a que no sabia el idioma. Se hace referencia a esa frustración que sentía como estudiante al no poder entender o expresar lo que pensaba dentro de esta escuela con una ideología de “English Only.” Se ve este proceso de aprendizaje del  segundo idioma como una obligación y una necesidad.

?La casa de quién?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5GYrBB86Fo

Ok, Will Ferrell is starring in a new Spanish-language film, La Casa de mi Padre, that is obviously meant to be hilarious. All of the co-stars are native Spanish-speakers. In an interview with Jon Stewart, Ferrell insisted that he did NOT learn Spanish for this role, but that the Spanish he speaks in it is very good (he's been told). What do we make of this??? Is mock-Spanish moving into mock-an-entire-culture in a feature-length film? What do ya'll think? I think we need a class trip to the theater to make a proper assessment.

Undiscovered Amerindians

A picture of Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco in "The Couple in the Cage".

Do you all remember a few weeks ago before Spring Break when Damián showed us a shocking video from Guillermo Gómez-Peña? Of course haha we all do. I found a video of the controversial performance piece that he and Coco Fusco did in the early 90s. They presented themselves as "unknown specimens representative of the Guatinaui people" by dressing themselves in outrageous costumes and performed crazy "native" tasks that included lifting weights, watching tv, sewing voodoo dolls and working on laptops. During feeding time museum guards would pass them bananas through the cage and when they needed to use the bathroom, they were escorted from their cage on leashes. They first staged this performance in 1992 in Madrid. Although Gómez-Peña and Fusco intended for this to be purely satirical, it is obvious that many people believed them to be from an undiscovered island in the Caribbean.

I found a quote from Fusco on an Emory University website: "Our cage became a blank screen onto which audiences projected their fantasies of who and what we are. As we assumed the stereotypical role of the domesticated savage, many audience members felt entitled to assume the role of colonizer, only to find themselves uncomfortable with the implications of the game."

Would people do the same thing today if they were to do this again in 2012? I'm not sure if this is a critique of colonialism or simply a satirical commentary on the notion of discovery, but it must have changed the way in which people began to view how history is packaged up and given to us without question.

Take a look at how this video dramatizes the dilemma of the cross-cultural misunderstanding that we still live with today.

NMCOSS, a window into the culture

So, I've started my extraction and coding for my final project (so I can do tables like Rena Torres Cacoullos), and to do so I have to read through every line of the NMCOSS looking for verbs conjugated in the tu or usted forms.  However, I did't realize until I started doing this that I could learn so much about language attitudes just from reading these interviews.  Pretty cool.  It's interesting to hear the different reasons people have for using or not using Spanish with their kids, or for not watching TV in English or vice versa.  None of the language shift reasons seem to be because they think Spanish is inferior; it seems like most of them attribute language shift to the school system and also to the abundance of entertainment in English.  However, code-switching seems to be just fine and quite prevalent.  I didn't mean to be studying code-switching in my second-person singular research, but I am getting quite frustrated looking for examples of the tu or usted forms and whenever there is a perfect opportunity for the interviewee to address the interviewer they switch to English to call them 'you'!  Ahhh!  I need those tokens!  I am now wondering if there is no vos here (for many reasons) but one of them being because the English 'you,' especially in metalinguistic commentary or discourse markers is taking over some of the spots where a Spanish prefab would be?  Hmmm...  But, one thing is for sure.  The sociolinguistic interview is not the place to study 2s address forms, conversation is.  I can now see why so many sociolinguists in the past found 2s usage to be strongly correlated with the 'dynamics of power and solidarity,' and not as much priming and prefabs.  Because an interview is such a formal setting, I feel like the interviewers are sticking to one form or the other, because it's not as natural as conversation.

Eh, anyways.  I figured I'd share my thoughts on this in case anybody was wondering where they could get some attitudes about both languages and their uses --> NMCOSS.

Code-switching for dummies....

Sometimes I think it is legit and other times I think it is for dummies... like me!

Some days I speak Spanish well.  Some days it's bad. Some days I code-switch. Sometimes feels really natural and flowing. Other times I give up in Spanish & switch to English... admittedly maybe for lack of confidence. I am not a native speaker of Spanish, I began learning at 22.  Sometimes it feels innate & sometimes really foreign.  I wonder if this is how "native" code-switchers feel? 

So is it legit when I code-switch... or does the material only apply to those who are native speakers or both languages? How do we determine these kinds of things, like who is "native" and who isn't?

Can't argue with science!

¡Hola compañeros! Here is a fascinating article that I read in the NYTIMES about bilingualism and cognition. This article reminded me of when we had a guest in our class at the beginning of the semester, Leah, and she said that language and music are two of the best things we can do for our brains. I thought that was so cool...And here is a great article that suggests the same thing. Enjoy, and keep strengthening those cognitive muscles!

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html?src=me&ref=general

Experiences in Las Cruces

During the break I went down to Cruces for a few days to visit my sister and go to a wedding. While there, I got the chance to spend some time with an 81 year-old woman from Cruces named Josie. I wanted to share a couple of things she said that I found interesting. I wish I had paid closer attention to her code-switching, but I was too fascinated by her jokes and home remedies. I have bunions which are getting more and more painful, and I happened to mention this to Josie. Well, her solution just might be the most interesting remedy I've heard in a very long time. She told me she used to have bunions too, but was able to get rid of them after a month by soaking her feet in vinegar and water, and then, after thoroughly cleaning a quarter, placing it on the bunion and securing it by wrapping tape around the foot. I've soaked my feet but have yet to use the quarter. I'm excited to see what happens!!  Later she told this joke which I can't really do justice, because you must hear it from miss Josie in a New Mexican Spanish accent, plus I can't remember exactly how she said it, but I thought I'd share what I can recall because it's really cute. 

Un dia unos viejitos van a la casa de otro viejito para visitarlo y consolarlo despues de la muerte de su esposa. "Como esta amigo?" le dicen. "Poco bien", el viejito contesta, y empieza a llorar y recordar a su esposa, describiendo como era a sus amigos. Pues mientras el viejito recuerda a su mujer, empieza a llorar mas y mas, tanto que se le salen las babas de la boca hasta el suelo. Uno de sus amigos, viendo eso quiere ayudar y le dice, "Amigo, y la baba?" "Si..." contesta el pobre viejito entre lagrimas, "y planchaba tambien."

For some reason I thought this was the greatest joke and I couldn't stop laughing!!

On another note, because we've been talking about code-switching and borrowing, I wanted to share something I heard on the street. I was walking out of a restaurant and I overheard a woman say to her friend, "Te hace exfoliate tu skin." I wanted to tell her how cool she is but decided against it. :)

How far "off the boat" as they say?

With all the talk about generations in this class I began thinking about my own genealogy. My grandfather on my father's side had already written several books on it, and according to his work, one of my direct ancestors (William Hele) came from England to Massachusetts in 1640.  But not all of my ancestors have been here that long.

My grandmother on my father's side also wrote a book on the genealogy on her side, and her father's people came through Ellis Island in 1892 from Hungary.  Her mother father's side came from Hugelheim, Wurttemburg, Germany to Pennsylvania around 1750, and her mother's mother's side also came from Germany around the same time.

Unfortunately, my mother's family has not gotten into genealogy until recently and they don't have any books published, but I did find out that I am a fourth generation Norwegian on that side.  My great-grandparents came over sometime in the 1920s and did not speak English.  So, the fact that I speak English and not Norwegian really shows how fast language shift can take place.  All of the great-grandparents I can remember from both sides spoke with heavy accents.

I know this is not really relevant to the Southwest US, but I have to connect the experiences of people here to my own in order to understand the similarities and the differences.  The migration that my ancestors undertook both in Europe, and even after they arrived in the US some moved to Canada and back and many have since moved all around the US.  Also, my father moved migrated to Indonesia, so the situation keeps getting more complex.  It's just interesting to see how people move and fall in love and mate and make society and then move again.

Another funny thing, my ancestor James Healy (1830-1900) is known as the first black Catholic bishop of America (he was half Irish and half African-American).

Knowing all this, I now understand why I was having a hard time understanding the connection that nuevo mexicanos with the Spanish language because so many of my peoples assimilated to English after moving to the states, even if it didn't happen immediately.  However, after knowing this, I understand better why we must work so hard to protect the traditional cultural values of the people that have been here so long.