Sí, yo quiero comer más pan.
“Yes, I want to eat more bread,” I type into the Duolingo text box.
I am doing Duolingo because I want to get better at Spanish because I am in mourning for who I might have been. That’s a heavy-handed description, but it’s accurate – I think about who I might have been if I hadn’t run from my language and my culture, and I feel great loss.
Spanish was my first language but once I hit elementary school, I wouldn’t speak it. My parents would speak to my sister and me in Spanish, and I’d respond in English. They would play salsa in the house, I’d roll my eyes. I’d cringe when they talked to new people, and their accents rang heavy in my ears. My sister was born on the island and is still fluent. I was born here and am decidedly less so.
When I was 15, we took a family trip to Puerto Rico. It’s the only time I’ve ever been. My mom is one of 11 children and about half of her siblings still live on the island. I had only seen them in old family photos, but they embraced me with open arms and fully stocked kitchens. (I have never eaten so well in my life. Find aunts and uncles who cook with flavor and love and who pass it all down the table to you.)
But, despite the love and embrace, the refrain of the trip was: mija, ¿por qué no me hablas en español?
It’s because I had to type this sentence into Google to see where the accent marks were supposed to go. I can understand and read Spanish well, but when it comes to writing and speaking, I flounder. I am embarrassed in front of native speakers – certain they will see through me and heroically point out that I am a clear phony with no real claim to my culture.
We left Puerto Rico after three weeks. I was tired – I get cranky and frustrated when I’m away from home for too long. My sister wept as we drove away from my aunt’s house to the airport. I didn’t get why. She was two years older than I am now and I think I finally understand because now I wish I had felt as deeply as she felt. I wish I wept with her.
Language and art are the two strongest connectors to culture. When colonizers invade countries, those are some of the first things they destroy – literally destroying or stealing cultural art, placing children in boarding schools where they are only allowed to speak English. The evidence is all over history.
The thing is, when you do find the art that’s been hidden and shoved aside in favor of the “classics” on school syllabi, you find yourself. Art and literature can provide the vocabulary that’s been missing. A sense of representation, unity, the vocabulary to begin parsing the fragmented, messy relationship between yourself and your culture. The things you desire, the things you grapple with – other people like you have accomplished those things, struggled with those concepts. You are not alone, you are not doomed, you are not the only person to have ever desired the way you desire. I was (I am!) absolutely desperate for connection.
Some of my professors in undergrad gave me the things I had rejected for years. Latin Music and Identity gave me the history of the music I had rolled my eyes at. I’m glad that, however reluctantly I was pulled into it, my parents taught me how to salsa in the kitchen. Caribbean Diaspora Literature and Latinx Lit gave me poetry and novels and essays by other Latinos who felt out of place and were navigating their identities in the U.S. Those were the classes that made me believe I could actually write.
Undergrad was rough. I was struggling with my mental health and terrified of disappointing those around me. I had placed impossible expectations of perfection upon myself and I felt I had to prove I belonged in academia – a place I was increasingly feeling like I did not belong. I think I only graduated because I found classes where the syllabi included Julia de Burgos, Héctor Lavoe, Esmeralda Santiago, Lucecita Benitez, Calle 13, the list goes on. Seeing yourself on a syllabus is powerful. Having professors that spoke openly about the inherent institutional racism present in higher education was powerful.
Regrets aren’t useful. Everyone makes the choices they’re equipped to make at the time they make them. You do what you think is best based on the information you have. I can’t be mad at myself for leaving Spanish behind as I moved through an educational system that was designed to assimilate anyone from a culture perceived as “other.”
I was scrolling through Twitter during the recent #RickyRenuncia protests in Puerto Rico. I cheered while watching Ricky Martin stand on a bus and wave a flag that was half rainbow, half Puerto Rican. When the governor finally renunció, I was still awake, scrolling and smiling and weeping in bed. I went home that Sunday and my parents and I yelled with joy but felt the tension – we wanted to be there, to celebrate and cry in the streets and be with our people, but the island isn’t home to us anymore. My mother has often said she wouldn’t move back, though she floats the idea every time she thinks about retiring.
“We’ll move back there, get some land and a small house, you’ll come stay with us for a year or two and write a book or something.”
Part of me desperately hopes it happens.
It probably won’t.
If it does, I hope I’m fluent in Spanish.