In Firmat’s Bilingual Blues, audiences were made to see a poet who was so charismatic, intelligent, a man whose life was a catalogue of diversity as a result of the combination of the multiple languages and cultures he came into contact with in his life time, and at the same time a very confused man who felt he’s just an example of a melting pot. A melting pot in the sense that he was not born in the united states, he was born in Cuba, then immigrated to a totally foreign land that according to his poetries a land where he doesn’t belong due to the fact that almost everything that is done in foreign culture was seen quite the opposite of what he had known. In the beginning of one of his poems Firmat’s begin the first stanza with a quotation “I am a melting pot of contradictions. …show more content…
According to these quotation, what Firmat might have been suffering of can be said as “Culture Shock” despite the fact that he came to the United States while he was a teenager. But he still feel the need to relate to his former country of Cuba where his father’s heritage was living well and alive but the fact that he is married to American and his kids are Americans, this created a feeling of confusion in the sense that having to speak or communicate in two different languages almost in a daily bases was so frustrating that Firmat think he doesn’t belong anywhere. On an audio interview Firmat had with NPR he said: In everyday life, trying to communicate in two languages can bring awkward situations, Perez Firmat says. And the speaking habits that result can be very revealing. I have feelings that I don’t know either of them fluently. Bilingualism is as a burden as a
Islas, Arturo. From Migrant Souls. American Mosaic: Multicultural Readings in Context. Eds. Gabriele Rico, Barbara Roche and Sandra Mano. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1995. 483-491.
Have you ever felt like you didn’t belong somewhere? Do you know what it feels like to be told you don’t belong in the place of your birth? People experience this quite frequently, because they may not be the stereotypical American citizen, and are told and convinced they don’t belong in the only place they see as home. In Gloria Anzaldúa’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Anzaldúa gives the reader an inside look at the struggles of an American citizen who experiences this in their life, due to their heritage. She uses rhetorical appeals to help get her messages across on the subliminal level and show her perspective’s importance. These rhetorical appeals deal with the emotion, logic and credibility of the statements made by the author. Anzaldúa
Martinez creates unity within in her essay by repeating key words/ phrases. Her main argument is the falling of a Euro American identity and the social disturbance it creates, and she restates this by saying “dominant society psych”, “Hey whitey it’s your turn at the back of the bus”, “Euro American anxiety”, “decline of Euro- American cultural centricity”. She never moves far from her original argument even as she retraces the steps of American “identity”, and she makes sure to point out...
Language is an important part of who we are. It influences the way we think and behave on a great scale. However, sometimes it is forced upon us to go in different directions just so we can physically and mentally feel as if we belong to the society in which we live in. Just as we see in Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez’s “A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, both authors faced some challenges along the way by coping with two different languages, while still trying to achieve the social position which they desired.
Throughout Richards early childhood development he quickly understood that in order to succeed in America he would have to learn to confidently speak in English. Richard is Hispanic American and although he was born in America, Spanish was the only language that he was exposed to as a young child. He grew up in a home where Spanish flowed freely, but he soon realized outside of his home the language that he primarily knew was foreign. His parents spoke fluent Spanish along with all of his relatives. The brief encounters he experienced of his parents speaking English were only in public places and the proficiency was very poor. Rodriguez’s home was as a safety net for him and his Spanish speaking family with they are his only real connections to the outside world. It wasn’t until Richards encounter with his teachers that he and his family was heavily impressed on the importance of developing a public language. After the encouragement of the visit home from a teacher as a family
One of his main points and I believe to be one of the central reasons behind him writing the book, is to state his harsh yet rightful opinion on bilingualists. Rodriguez states, "The bilingualists insist that a student should be reminded of his difference from others in mass society, his heritage. But they equate mere separateness with individuality" (27). Because he has personally been through that situation, he wants people to understand and support his opinion and possibly persuade them to have a certain opinion on bilingualists.
Balderrama represents a caring teacher that found herself not understanding the difference between English and Spanish because she grew in California. This allowed her to effect pedagogical accommodations to the Latinos ass a teacher. However, she agrees that xenophobia is rife and hard to be eliminated within the society. The minority and new migrants within the society face numerous challenges ranging from culture shock to acclimatizing to the new environment and bilingualism and biliteracy would enhance their learning experiences. According to Colin Baker bilingualism and biliteracy indeed influences critical thinking, rationality, and sensitivity to other cultures, empathy, and detached or balanced awareness. Therefore, the importance of teachers is promoting biliteracy and bilingualism cannot be understated because it is the backbone of effective learning through integrating a minority group into the majority group. The majority need to learn the language to enhance their understanding that is the importance towards achieving critical thinking, rationality, and sensitivity to other cultures, empathy, and detached or balanced awareness. Additionally, realizing that bilingualism cannot be detached from any community that freely promotes and accommodates the language spoken by the other community helps in promoting biliteracy. Therefore, the
In the first chapter “A new Race?”, the author affirmed that the beginning of America was viewed as an entry to a brand new life which interweaves separate ethnic strands into a new national design and liberates people from the terrible past. At the beginning, people would regard the America not so much as nation but as a world. For the society is one consists of people coming from all over the world. There were people who would depict the future of the society as without roots, without memories, without prejudices and all of people tend to have their happy time in it. There were also some people would deem the future of the society as one that would get everyone assimilated to a common customs, measures and laws, in which we will soon become one people. Also, the author mentioned that this kind of melting pot idea has an Anglocentric flavor. But such a metaphor raised a lot of doubts. ...
I decided to analyze the poem English con Salsa by Gina Valdes, because I can identify myself with this poem in many different aspects. Both my parents and I were born in Mexico, but decided to move to the United States on February of 2000. With us moving here, we brought along our traditions and customs. My family has a blend of American culture with Latino culture since a few of my uncles married American women and had children. I feel that Valdes poem is about finding that “in between” feelings that are brought up when two cultures are mixed together.
...community, equal rights and the right to follow your roots) with the central focus of the poem. As Susan Bassnett states in her essay Bilingual Poetry: A Chicano Phenomenon , there is a “Latin American tradition of the poet who occupies a prominent place in the struggle for freedom and national unity”, and as Cervantes and Gonzales demonstrated, the poet’s role in Latin America has not been diminished.
Literacy is vital for reading and writing of all children, both hearing and deaf. Research has shown that having a strong L1 foundation, it can be applied in learning how to read and write in English. Advocates of bilingual bicultural education agree that the reading and writing skills that are acquired based on the strong foundation of their L1 develops the foundation of L2 (Evans, 2004; Puente et al, 2006). Researches conducted by Padden & Ramsey (2000) show that ASL fingerspelling skills are related to English literacy and vocabulary knowledge (Hile, 2009). One study done by Padden & Ramsey (2000), showed the fingerspelling tasks that were given to thirty-one deaf students in two groups (3rd-4th graders
For more than 300 years, immigrants from every corner of the globe have settled in America, creating the most diverse and heterogeneous nation on Earth. Though immigrants have given much to the country, their process of changing from their homeland to the new land has never been easy. To immigrate does not only mean to come and live in a country after leaving your own country, but it also means to deal with many new and unfamiliar situations, social backgrounds, cultures, and mainly with the acquisition and master of a new language. This often causes mixed emotions, frustration, awkward feelings, and other conflicts. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, the author describes the social, cultural and linguistic difficulties encountered in America as he attempts to assimilate to the American culture. Richard Rodriguez by committing himself to speaking English, he lost his cultural ties, family background and ethnic heritage.
Learning English, Richard lost his connection to his family, and his heritage by losing how to speak Spanish, the language of his family, by learning English. He writes “My mother! My father! After English became my primary language, I no longer knew what words to use in addressing my parents. The old Spanish words (those tender accents of sound) I had earlier used - mamá and papá - I couldn 't use any more” (32). I do believe, learning English, in a bad form of bilingual education will make you lose the sense with you other language, too. I know that because that happened to me. I was born in Kenya even though I was Somalian, I knew Swahili, when I came here, and within 5 years I forgot everything I knew, in those same five years I was becoming more fluent in English. In a proper setting, though that wouldn’t have happened, because evidence has shown that it suppose to make you more fluent in your own language as that 's how you would transition into
Julia Alvarez was an example of how a Latina writer identified herself in a new culture outside of her comfort zone. She, as a Dominican Diaspora, had to reinvent herself as she migrated into a new scenario. Her assimilation into the United States culture allowed her to understand and relate to the reader’s needs and points of interests. After all the effort, Alvarez kept in mind that she could not comfort to all the reality that she lived in, so she re-reinvented herself all over again to process her thoughts and beliefs into her life. She put her perspective on her writing so that the new wave of readers, even if they did not understand, could relate in some way and appreciate the differences. The sole purpose of her writings was for everyone to change their perspective from “walk to the other side of the street in order to avoid sharing the same sidewalk” to “I do not know them, but I do not avoid them because I do not know them”. She instilled in her reader’s mind how ordinary events were viewed differently through other cultures’ eyes. Her story Snow was a great example of how she portrayed her technique.
Language has pioneered many interracial relationships and historical milestones. Language is a necessity for basic communication and cultural diversity. Being multilingual is a skill proven influential to a successful future. Due to rapid globalization, countries all over the world are stressing the importance of learning a second, or even third, language. With the exception of time and lack of resources, adults have very few widely applicable disadvantages to learning multiple languages. However, language learning as a child presents more complications. Some of those include not having enough funding at the elementary school level to introduce a program for secondary language, academic overload for the youth, stress for both the parent and student parties, and the mixing of languages. Not all of these complications are true in any or all situations, however, and the absence of them provides multitudes of opportunity for future career and academic success. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the parents or the education legislation to decide whether they encourage the learning of a secondary language at the young age necessary for retention. “The general consensus is that it takes between five to seven years for an individual to achieve advanced fluency,” therefore the younger a child begins to learn, the more likely they are to benefit to the maximum potential (Robertson). Keeping the language learning in high school or beginning the process earlier is a greatly controversial discussion that is important to address because of the topic’s already lengthy suspension.