Multicultural Children

     Virginia Collier writes that "language is enchanting, powerful, magical, useful, personal, natural, all-important"(235) and this description instantly reminded me of the Spanish language Richard Rodriguez's family and he used before learning to speak the "public language" of English.  Rodriguez writes about the somewhat private and special Spanish language he spoke at home before teachers suggested that his parents speak to him exclusively in English. "But I had no place to escape with Spanish.  (The spell was broken.)  My brother and sisters were speaking English in another part of the house...But the special feeling of closeness at home was diminished by then.  Gone was the desperate, urgent, intense feeling of being at home; rare was the experience of feeling myself individualized by family intimates.  We remained a loving family, but one greatly changed.  No longer so close; no longer bound tight by the pleasing and troubling knowledge of our public separateness.  Neither my older brother nor sister rushed home from school anymore.  Nor did I.  When I arrived home there would often be neighborhood kids in the house.  Or the house would be empty of sounds"(36). Rodriguez's teachers (nuns) were trying to drill the English language into his mind by removing the Spanish language from his home; however, in doing so they took away the very essence of what made Rodriguez's house a home.  The nuns inadvertently took away the sense of family closeness that had been sewn together with the thread of a common family language.

See Richard Rodriguez speak to the issue of language and culture in this speech from 1999.  In the first 10 minutes, he addresses the same story he does in "Aria."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz2wLvK9p9Q

     Ironically, Rodriguez ultimately gives credit to his teachers for forcing him to speak only English at home because at the time he thought that English was exclusively a "public language" and Spanish exclusively a "private language."  He didn't understand at the time that a language could be both.  "Because I wrongly imagined that English was intrinsically a public language and Spanish an intrinsically private one, I easily noted the difference between classroom language and the language of home"(34).  I understand that Rodriguez probably learned to be a better English speaker due to his experience, but I ask myself at what cost??  Rodriguez's family completely changed, his home life was never the same intimate experience it had been in the past, and his father became a introvert unless able to express himself in Spanish.  The "enchanting, powerful, magical, useful, personal, natural, all-important" Spanish language was taken away from Rodriguez's family and as a result, his family was never the same.
     After reading both pieces, I immediately thought about Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street.  It is a series of vignettes which chronicle the protagonist Esperanza's journey to womanhood.  One thing I specifically remember from the novel was Esperanza's special time at home with her family.  Their family was built around a shared language and there was a certain intimacy in this inclusion.  The opening lines read, "In English my name means hope.  In Spanish it means too many letters.  It means sadness, it means waiting."  In this case, the Spanish meaning has some pain and heartache involved in it, but it has an essential meaning nevertheless.  It has a purpose.  Her family's closeness is further explained when Esperanza speaks about her mother.  "But my mother's hair, my mother's hair, like little rosettes, like little candy circles all curly and pretty because she pinned it in pincurls all day, sweet to put your nose into when she is holding you, holding you and you feel safe, is the warm smell of bread before you bake it, is the smell when she makes room for you on her side of the bed still warm with her skin, and you sleep near her, the rain outside falling and papa snoring." I think that Cisneros and Rodriguez would both agree that the Spanish language was an essential part of what bonded their families together.  They had something that no one else had and they could communicate in a way that was special to them.  This communicative power was taken away from Rodriguez when his family stopped speaking Spanish at home.  I think Collier takes this one step further.  She understands the need for a private family language.  She would also suggest that there is a necessity for this primary language to be spoken and taught at home and at school for students to be able to learn a second language well without sacrificing culture and family communication at home.