Finding my voice
A journey of learning to accept language in every aspect of life
Written by Lili Luna Cruz
There are a lot of things from when I was little that I can’t remember — stories and events that have completely slipped my mind. Though, every once in a while, when my parents get sentimental around the dinner table, I am reminded of them.
Like the time a flying soccer cleat hit me in the face because my cousin had a vendetta against tying his shoes or the time I refused to use our bathroom because the fish on the shower curtain scared me.
These reminders don’t just come from stories, but anything that is repeated back to me enough times, like being told the proper way to plant seeds by my grandpa or how to best knead the dough for tortillas by my mom.
These are things I am glad I am reminded of, but there are others I have spent years of my life trying to forget.
Fourth grade is one of those memories. It was the first year that I was no longer in a bilingual program at my school, as it was only offered up to the third grade. The transition from learning all the school subjects in Spanish to English wasn’t easy. My classmates and I had to rely on each other to clarify things because our teacher didn’t know Spanish. We made it work because we had to.
We couldn’t have been more than a month into the school year when a complaint came in.
A parent had spoken to the teacher saying that their child had felt uncomfortable in the classroom. Our whispering and conversing in Spanish made the student uneasy. They didn’t know what we were saying and they felt left out; they felt that we were secretly making fun of them.
One complaint was all it took for the no-Spanish rule to be implemented in our classroom.
Getting caught speaking Spanish meant getting lectured for being disrespectful to our non-Spanish-speaking peers. If you got caught enough times, you’d get sent to the principal’s office for not following directions.
That was the first time I felt my relationship with the Spanish language begin to shift.
I had never been shy about speaking Spanish before, but suddenly it was taboo. Loud, booming conversations from recess and lunchtime came to a stuttering halt when we stepped foot in the classroom. The issue was never that we were speaking during class but rather, the fact we were doing it in Spanish.
As the year progressed and the rule continued to be enforced, I began to feel conflicted.
Spanish was a part of every aspect of my life. It was how I talked and spent time with my family. It was in the movies and shows I watched, the music I listened to and the books I read.
I was like every other kid, trying to find my voice and place in the world. Sharing my thoughts and ideas with anyone who would listen. I wanted to be heard but because it wasn’t in English, others didn’t want to hear it.
Things around me continued to move forward but I felt stuck. Stuck between two worlds and two versions of myself — the one that spoke Spanish and the one that pretended I didn’t.
I hadn’t realized it at first but I had begun to code-switch as if it were my second nature. I changed how I talked and acted whenever I spoke English and then reverted back to myself when I spoke Spanish. Even as I moved forward in my schooling with fewer rules regarding speaking Spanish, I never went back to how I was before.
Without being able to rely on my Spanish, I had to shift to speaking in a language I had just started to learn.
That is why middle school terrified me. I was put in classes where no one looked like me and no one mispronounced things like I did. They didn’t struggle with spelling or understanding simple words, let alone forget how to say something in English. I would spend class periods stuck on a word, not knowing what it meant. My English papers came back covered in red ink.
I was told to ask my parents for help, but I couldn’t. They didn’t know the language.
It didn’t help that at the time Donald Trump had begun his presidential race, spouting out insults. The phrase ‘this is a country where we speak English, not Spanish’ stuck with me. It was one of those things that were repeated over and over; sometimes at others, sometimes at me but always with the same sentiment: you shouldn’t be speaking Spanish here.
I read news articles and watched videos of the continued harassment of Spanish speakers in the U.S.
31 states declared English as their official language, reducing bilingual programs even in areas with high Hispanic populations. The words ‘you need to speak English’ began ringing around my head until, one day, it became engraved.
When I was young, the voices of those who didn’t want to hear Spanish became louder and I felt my voice becoming quieter.
Except when I went home. At home, no one asked me to switch to English or to watch what I was saying. I was able to freely enjoy something that had always been an integral part of my life. My parents taught me that despite what others said, speaking Spanish didn’t have to stay at home.
Through all of the hate that circulated, my parents never stopped being proud of their heritage and their language. When I hesitated to speak Spanish in white-dominated spaces, they rambled on. They spoke loudly and proudly and encouraged me to do the same.
I had never seen being bilingual as a great feat, but my parents looked on in awe. To me, English was just something that I was expected to learn and perfect and it was a language others saw as superior to my own.
To my family, English was access to a whole new part of the world. My parent’s support and love for my ability to speak both languages fluently ignited my love and appreciation for being bilingual.
I may never be able to forget being told that if I wasn’t going to speak English to not speak at all, but I will also never forget my love for the Spanish language and everything it means to me. That is why years later, after countless crude interactions, I only have one thing left to say:
Mejor ponte a aprender Español.
