My American Dream and My Disappointment with Language (Liz Cortes)
I couldn’t start talking about language without telling first who I am, and that’s the reason is so difficult to explain which are my languages. Speak about it, is put my business in the street as James Baldwin explained in “If black English isn’t a language, then tell me, what is?”, and when that happens is impossible not to feel unsecured of others’ opinion. In addition is more difficult when you must speak in other’s languages.
To define my language and identity I will begin by saying that I am from Colombia, Bogota, I am 19 years old, and I grow up with my mother’s family (my mom, aunt, grandparents, and a cat). Based on this you can assume that my first language is Spanish and how special it is for me.
Dipping a little bit more in my language, something that catches my attention is the way that we spoke with our loved ones. “Mi niña”(my girl)- would say my mother, “mi chiquitina”(my little girl)- my boyfriend, “tesorito”(my little treasure)- my grandma, “cucu”(cucu)- my aunt and for my cat I would use “chonchito” (chubby )to call him. Those are some nicknames that we use, another word that I used a lot of is “cosita” (little thing) to name everything that I think is cute. This language makes me feel so comfortable and understood, but now I feel sad, because I am no longer with my family, and I have just moved to North America looking to continue my education and learn a new language. This new language, English, challenge me to communicate with other words and intentions, leaving back my accent and my own expressions. Getting adapted is being so difficult and more when Covid-19 circumstances make it hard to socialize and practice this new language.
The difficulties of learning a new language make you wonder about your identity and see how others classify you as “Hispanic” (a world that I never thought I will use to identify myself), and it gets worst when the stereotype of Hispanic is the first impression that people have from you. A lot of questions come to my mind: why I couldn’t get the same opportunities with my language? Why I must be different to make my dreams come true, how your own dreams could become true without your loved ones? Has any sense been here? I lose my time, my energy, and my life wondering all of this until I just resigned to wake up every day as one more day away from home.
I have been experiencing homesickness, willing to come back home and just be with my family again, but at the same time willing to know more about this country, learn more from new experiences, and see the world from another perspective. It pushes me to keep trying until English became part of my identity, as a lot of people must do as well.
Recently I heard a beautiful short history from National Geography about Naghmeh Farzaneh’s immigration and she mentioned her mother’s words when she worked in her garden “when you move a plant from one place to another you have to give it some time before to grow new leaves” to explain how long takes for a person accustomed to other ground, another language and food.
I feel I must give some time to myself to accommodate this new world and love the language and person that I am becoming to be.
Baldwin, James. “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?”
The York Times. 29 July 1979,
Youtube, uploaded by National Geographic, 14 October 2017,
Special Languages — David
What is a language? It is the way we communicate with each other and is another way to identify each other. When we speak a language, other people will question our background and where we come from. There are many authors who have done research and discuss the ways languages create and identify groups by inclusion and exclusion. I have observed this in my life because of my heritage and the languages I speak, which are English and Spanish. I will use Gloria Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” from Borderlands/La Frontera as I can relate to her story because I am also of Mexican heritage and the languages spoken. If someone were to be born of the same heritage, it is expected that you learn the Spanish language and speak to be able to communicate with family members or others who can speak only Spanish.
My experience with the languages has been different to that of Anzaldua because I started speaking English and have always read, written, and listened in the same language. I do not think I ever took a class or learned any other languages in school. I started to learn how to speak Spanish at home because of my mother. At home, I speak only Spanish with my mother as she cannot communicate in English. My Spanish is not great so I try my best to communicate with her so she can understand me. My family, like Anzaldua’s mother, told her that “I want you to speak English. Pa’ hallar buen trabajo tienes que saber hablar el Ingles bien. Que vale todo tu educación si todavía hablas ingles con un ‘accent’” (Anzaldúa,.34.) My family believes that by speaking English, one can be successful in the United States because you can speak with many people and can get a job for it. I do not think I experienced Anzaldua’s story of learning to speak English, but my older brother has because English is his second language. My brother and I both can speak English but have different experiences learning the language as English is his second language and for me it is my first.
Growing up, my brother has told me stories of taking ESL (English as a Second Language) classes, being told many times to improve his English by reading and writing in the language and has been made fun of because he had a “Mexican accent”. What makes it interesting is that both of us were born in New York, yet he learns how to speak Spanish first. He started taking ESL classes and was mostly put in Bilingual classes to be able to understand both languages. Those ESL classes did not end for him until he got to high school. After he got to high school, it did not stop there because his English teacher was informed of his ESL experience and was told the same thing to keep improving his English. I remember a story he told me once that he had to make a presentation about his internship to a sophomore class and at the end, his classmate commented how he spoke in a “Mexican accent”. The experience made him feel excluded because he felt uncomfortable speaking the language and receive comments on his speaking. I also feel excluded not because of my English but my Spanish and feel the same as Anzaldua who feels like a “Pocho, cultural traitor” for speaking mostly English and not speaking Spanish well.
When I speak Spanish, I get corrected a lot of times because I cannot be understood and sometimes it makes me feel a bit embarrassed. There are times where I cannot say several words in Spanish that my brother must translate for me. Although I do not speak the language with friends, I still must learn the language to be able to communicate at home. In Anzaldua’s section in the reading “Linguistic Terrorism”, for Chicanas such as herself, are scared because they will be shamed for the way they speak Spanish and get told they are not speaking it right. I agree with Anzaldua’s statement that “repeated attacks on our native tongue diminish our sense of self. The attacks continue throughout our lives” (Anzaldua, 39.) You can say that there are attacks on our heritage because of the language we belong to and feel insulted for trying to speak it or for not speaking it. I agree with Anzaldua that for those who are afraid that others will call them “agringadas” because those who speaking English are unable to speak Chicano Spanish. I feel that it is already happening with people who come from immigrant families in the United States. Spanish speaking households will come to believe that it will be best for their children to grow up learning the English language to avoid being criticize in U.S. society. Anzaldua brings up an important detail that “by the end of this century, English, not Spanish, will be the mother tongue of most Chicanos and Latinos” (Anzaldua, 39.) Chicanos and Latinos will grow to speak English to be able to better communicate and be successful in life but at the same time, will suffer because they feel shamed from coming from a Spanish speaking household.
Language is a powerful tool to communicate with other people that it will lead to inclusion and exclusion. The heritage of one can affect how they will be seen in U.S. society where it is taught that English should be used to communicate everywhere. Anzaldua’s work is a great example to use to explain how those who speak other languages other than English are facing challenges to be accepted by others by learning and speaking English but at the same time, rejected for the same reason by those in our heritage.
Works Cited:
Anzaldua, Gloria. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”. Borderlands/La Frontera (p. 33-45)
The Sickest of the Sick
Angela La
“Did you know that the lungs are considered the organs of grief?” the chiropractor asks me, slowly moving the cold diaphragm of his stethoscope across my back. He tells me to cough, and I do. I wonder what he hears. Is there something wrong with me?
My mother sits in the corner, hand on her chest and watching with a slight frown. She’s always frowning and touching her chest, like she can’t believe anything is ever happening.
“She just coughs and coughs,” she gripes to the chiropractor. “She’s sick.”
At another time and place, I’m in a restroom, squeezed into the smallest stall with my girlfriend. She’s sitting with her legs crossed on the toilet, and I’m up against the door trying to keep myself from sliding down. We’re both whacked; before this we smoked a blunt, skin-popped a couple Dilaudid ampules, and chased it with a double G&T. I need this, and I watch her work her keys in the little plastic jar, breaking up the little white rocks. Live heavy music thumps through the walls, and I’m growing impatient. I pick a lump from the jar with my fingers and crush it between my teeth. My girlfriend laughs, calls me a sicko. We rejoin the crowd, arms linked and clinging to each other, mesmerized by the light show and the crooning silhouette on stage. This is sick, man, and I’m swallowed up by the crowd, the heat, and the colors.
Somewhere else, some time later, I hear my mother and sister arguing in the hall. I’m slumped in a mechanical bed, sort of dressed in a too-big hospital gown, sort of wrapped in that scratchy not-wool kind of blanket. I stared straight ahead, feeling very tragic and suffocated by the sunlight that beat down through the window.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with her head,” my mom says. I can’t see it, but I can picture her shaking her head in disbelief, hand on her chest.
“She’s sick,” my sister pleads.
Sick is a magic word. “Sick jokes and sick cartoons, sick comics and sick singers, sick, sick, sick – till it almost made you sick,” wrote Albert Goldman. It can mean twisted or disturbed, like this Lenny Bruce joke: “Can Billy come out and play?” “You know he has no arms or legs.” “That’s ok, we just want to use him for home plate.” That’s sick, man. It can mean physically ill, like “I got sick all over the backseat of an Uber.” Or “That’s a sick kickflip:” gnarly, dope, awesome. In standard English, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, sick means “affected with disease or ill health,” as in I have a fever so I am sick. If you read from the New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, it means “excellent; wonderful. On the principle that BAD means good,” as in The Linda Ronstadt concert was sick. In my NA group, we’re not supposed to say “addict.” We come up with different ways to describe how “sick” we are, how far along the prognosis we are: I am a person with a substance use disorder. I misuse hazardous drugs and alcohol. I am in recovery. These are all to say I have a problem, an illness. Not I am the sickness.
“When confronting the power of addiction, the power of language is important to keep in mind,” said Colleen Walsh in “Revising the language of addiction.” The terms “abuse” and “abuser” have a lot of negative connotations to it; Sarah Wakeman wrote in an article for the American Society of Addiction Medication that the words imply “a willful misconduct and have been shown to increase stigma and reduce the quality of care.” Then, there’s the difference between dependency and addiction. Someone can become dependent on opioids used to treat chronic pain, meaning if they stop taking it, they will experience withdrawal. Addiction, according to the American Psychiatric Association, is a medical disorder that involves compulsive substance use despite harmful consequences. The Gateway Foundation says, “The pervasiveness of addiction replacement shows that addiction is a disease, not a bad habit.”
I line it all up on the table:
-Antibiotics
-Ketamine nasal spray
-The prescription I take to sleep
-Cough syrup with codeine
-The prescription I no longer need to take, the one I took in addition to my regular Prozac and Seroquel and the propranolol that combats the side effects of the Prozac and Seroquel
-Advil (sugar coated)
-A brown bottle of capsules filled with Chinese herbs, something to combat phlegm and wheezing
-Subscription vitamins
-Homemade smokable herb blend to help with smoking cessation
-The prescription I’m supposed to take for smoking cessation
According to my doctor, I have a lot of drive and ambition that he told me I should not confuse with well-being. He wrote in my chart that I was Classic Depressive, Substance Abuser, Articulate. He asked me how I felt, being in the psych ward, and I said I felt pretty desperate. It was the worst thing I could ever imagine, and at the same time, I couldn’t imagine it. My brain was in two pieces and I couldn’t bridge the gap. “Sick was as good a way as any to describe it,” wrote Suzanne Scanlon.
It’s a weird feeling to be a member of the unexclusive club of people who have been damaged by addiction, perpetually in recovery. The period when a person is recovering from sickness is called a convalescence. The time in this space is slow moving, we often say at the meetings to “take it one day at a time.” I wish sick only meant the thing you’re first taught it means, that it involves sneezing and coughing and chills. We use it to mean being angry all the time, not getting enough sleep, sleeping too much, hurting people and breaking promises. It’s desperate and maddening, and Supervert wrote it best: “I am taunting my future self, making my own life more painful and difficult. I do it willingly, proud of the work I do in terrorizing myself, all the while fearing the point at which it will catch up to me.” Would a healthy person do that to themself?
Vogue
Ryan Smith
The Queer community has always found solace within itself and among its peers, therefore queer language was born. This language trickles down from various communities but the one with the biggest impact is the Black Community but more so the Black Queer Community. Queer people have taken these ideas and phrases, and brought them into a different light shared amongst the world.
There are limitless phrases and words that live within these communities that the Hetero community wouldn’t understand or resonate with. These phrases and words are ever changing in addition to evolving with newer generations and influences adding to the mix. As we use these words and phrases, we need to be mindful and be respectful about where they came from. One of the most famous sources for this is the film Paris is Burning. A film documenting the lives of Black and Latin queer individuals living in New York City during the 1980’s. Its primary focus is the “Ball Culture” but also dictates many words and phrases that are used today by so many different people. Nowadays there are many renditions of specific words, nevertheless they all share one quality and that’s they all stemmed from one place of origin.
The “Ball Culture” stemming from the very beginning of the 1920’s was a way for Black and Latino Queer people to showcase talents and “looks” within what they would refer to as their “Houses”. Houses were a family like group of individuals that have found shelter within each other. They would often compete amongst one another in these “Balls” turning looks and striking poses to earn trophies and a name for themselves. New York City was seen as the epicenter of the Ball room scene and still to this day it’s still unmatched. This culture and world caught the attention of many faces who were in the mainstream media at the time of the late 1980’s to early 1990’s. That’s when the world really saw the endless talent of this Queer Community. Arguably the biggest artist at the time was Madonna who really put the spotlight on Ball scene with her hit classic Vogue. The song starts off with the quotes “What are you looking at? Strike a pose, Strike a pose Vogue (vogue, vogue) Vogue (vogue, vogue)”. As familiar as those words are now, the term “Vogueing” simply states: To walk or dance in such a way that you imitate characteristic poses from a model on a catwalk. During her many performances she showed the world what it meant to “Vogue” by showcasing the talents of these artists in her shows who’ve directly come from the Ball Room scene for instance Luis Xtravaganza Camacho and Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza, both from the Legendary House of Xtravaganza.
This can all be seen as a direct relation to the famous essay “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What is? Written by James Baldwin. In the essay he states how “Black English” isn’t shown as a reputable language in terms of white people. Yet people are ever taking words and phrases from the Black Community, yet they put down their trying efforts and make it seem as if their language and words aren’t as valid as the ones used by white people. Baldwin states that white people belittle the Black Community with the language used but by no effort try to understand and respect the chosen language used but instead they look down upon it. To this very day it happens with Black and Queer language. Some saw Madonna as someone who’s white, essentially stole this culture from The Black and Latino Queer community with her hit single Vogue. But with further discussion she paid respects to the ones whose very life she showed the world. We must always remember where these words and phrases originated from and to be used with the upmost respect.
Language isn’t just words thrown together piece by piece, but instead is a beautiful work of art. It has history, culture, pain, and love. It’s all things that make it unique to people from all walks of life. These languages are deep rooted in so many different communities from all over the world and it’s what makes the human experience immeasurable. With each passing day we see these ideas and words develop into something original and innovative. Within the queer community there’s so many diverse groups but the one thing that seems to be unbounded is the language spoken. It’s a rare and beautiful thing to be a part of and should be celebrated in such a way.
Works Cited:
Baldwin, James. “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?”
The New York Times. 29 July 1979,
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-english.html?,%2522%2520&st=cse
Special Languages
Think about the languages you speak –not just the kinds of big languages that get printed on the spines of dictionaries (English, Arabic, Spanish, and so on) but the languages that your smaller communities have built and use to, in Baldwin’s terms, “describe and thus control” their realities.
Many of these authors discuss the ways languages create and define group identities by inclusion and exclusion. How have you observed this in your own life? Think about the groups you belong to: what “secret languages” do you use? Choose one word or phrase that a groups you belong to uses that people outside of that group do not use and/or understand. In what ways does this word or phrase operate? Use at least one of our readings as an analytical framework or point of reference.
Write about this word or phrase in an essay of 750-1000 words. For your first submitted draft, you submit this essay via Turn It In on our Blackboard page. (See my email if you are confused.) Your final draft will be published as a blog post on this site.
First Draft due Saturday, 10/2, 11:59 pm
Final Draft due Sunday, 10/10, 11:59 pm
To Live In The Borderlands
A poem by Gloria Anzaldua
In Which I Fangirl Out Over Natalie Diaz
Read this and watch the videos before you read the essays, is my advice. I’m not forcing a comment on this one — though commenting makes class more fun for everyone! — but I think you will get more out of the essays if you do this part.
Natalie Diaz. What’s not to love?
She’s a poet. She’s a warrior for language preservation. She’s a basketball star. She has the coolest insta, full of pictures of Mojave land and cool cocktails and thoughts about poetry I don’t see other places. Like this one, for instance:
…which I can’t get to embed properly. Here’s a link:
A post shared by Natalie Diaz (@ndinn)
This week, we are looking at two short essays of hers about language. But boy howdy, is her poetry also worth your time. I’m a particular fan of:
“As A Consequence of My Brother Stealing All The Lightbulbs”
“They Don’t Love You Like I Love You”
…I could go on. You don’t have to read any of those poems. But you should! She’s spectacular, and she is also still alive and writing! Get your life.
Here are a couple of videos to watch before class.
This video was made by the MacArthur Foundation, after Diaz won the award popularly known as the Genius Grant.
…And here’s me carrying on about her:
Now go read those essays!
Losing Farther, Losing Faster.
Click here to read Natalie Diaz’s essay “Losing Farther, Losing Faster.”
Please also read the Elizabeth Bishop poem she is writing back to, “One Art”
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47536/one-art
After you read this essay, post a reply using the “terms and ideas” model. Watch the Terms and Ideas” video and read more about that model here.
A reminder on the form:
- Read the article (or essay or poem) first. Take note of things you need to look up. Look them up. Check that you are using a definition that makes sense.
- Mark sections of the text that introduce interesting ideas. This is much easier to do if you are reading on paper! If you are reading on-screen, write notes in a notebook. I know, it’s easier not to, but you will really, really wish you had done this when it is time to write a paper on this topic. Plus it makes you smarter.
- In you reply, list at least 3 terms you looked up. This can mean just looking a word up in the dictionary — such as “tabernacle,” in the James Baldwin — or looking up a broader concept — such as “Congo Square” in wikipedia or similar. (Yes, wikipedia is fine for this purpose.)
- PROVIDE A SOURCE FOR YOUR DEFINITION. If you copy it word for word — which is fine for this assignment — PUT IT IN QUOTATION MARKS. You don’t need to use full MLA format for this assignment, though you are welcome to. A URL in parentheses or a link is fine. But get in the habit of giving credit to your sources.
- Next, write 1-3 paragraphs about an idea in the text you think is worth further examination.
- After making your reply, return to the post and comment on 2-3 of your classmates’ replies. You may learn something! There are a lot of smart people around here.
Teaching New Words/New Worlds
“Teaching New Worlds/New Words” by bell hooks
Yes, her name really is all lowercase.
https://rhetoricreadinggroup.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/bell-hooks_rrg.pdf
(You can read and/or listen to the Adrienne Rich poem she mentions here.)
