Things I Blame My Parents for: I could have been multilingual
They know I love them, but yeah, this one always gets me.
Growing up in a multi-ethnic household on the doorstep of one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world meant that I was surrounded by languages. I was fortunate enough to be exposed to different cultures through food from an early age (my dad was a "foodie" before there was a name for such a person) and I can’t even begin to list all the cultures my friends and classmates at school represented.
And then there was me, the racially ambiguous eldest daughter of two first-generation New Yorkers - from two completely different cultures - and I was monolingual. My parents were both fluent in their respective languages (Spanish and German, with a touch of Yiddish thrown in for good measure), and passed none of that on to me or my brothers.
My parents’ reasons for not passing on the gift of multilingualism aside, while it might seem like this would be something that one would only recognise as a deficit later on in life, it was actually quite apparent to me from a very early age that I was missing out on something. Most of my friends spoke other languages at home, and in fact most people expected me to posses the ability to speak another language, simply because of how I looked. I don't think anyone ever expected me to speak the mother tongue of my actual mother (German), but I was often shamed for not being able to speak Spanish.
I had a Latin teacher in 7th grade (don’t even ask) who was so tough on me because he assumed I spoke Spanish, even though I failed to grasp the nuances of the dead language he was so passionate about. I sat in his class for two years, suffering the shame of my linguistic struggle, until my dad finally went in for a parent-teacher conference and told him I was not, in fact, a Spanish-speaker. I wasn’t there for the meeting, but I’ll never forget the 180-degree-shift in how that teacher spoke to me, graded my assignments, and actually offered to help me, afterwards.
This isn’t a phenomenon relegated only to my childhood. As an adult in Ireland, where there is a large population of Brazilian immigrants, it is often assumed that I can speak Portuguese. There have been more than a few instances of me navigating the disappointment/surprise of others after admitting that I do not speak the language or come from their culture.
So, what's the big deal? I suppose as someone who has encountered the assumptions of others literally since infancy based on my phenotypical appearance (are parents in mono-ethnic households also asked where they “got” their children from?), I wish people could remember that human beings are not meant to be put into the boxes of identity that society has created for us. I have never fit neatly into a box labeled "race/ethnicity," so why should it be assumed that I speak a certain language/ascribe to a certain belief system/represent a certain culture, just because of how I look? And if these assumptions cannot be made of me, why should I ever make them about someone else?
Instead of assuming someone possesses certain traits related to an identity that either you've assumed or they've self-identified (I'll tell anyone who asks that I'm a Puerto Rican/German-non-practicing-Jew, but that still doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot when it comes to language), maybe just talk to them first? Get to know them? See what else they might be about beyond their racial/ethnic/cultural identifiers? I'm a whole lot more than those identities, but I don't know how often people have seen past them and gotten to know who I really am.
In thinking about these issues, I’m also struck by the conversations I’ve been having lately about representation in the arts and media. Representation is great, if there are other people like you in the universe. But what does representation look like for those of us who are not quite like anyone else? I’m not exactly a unicorn, but aside from my brothers, I don’t know anyone else with quite the same ethnic/racial makeup as me. I suppose that’s a big reason for me wanting to be a writer: I’m never going to read a story about someone who’s just like me, unless I write that story myself. Now, that’s an idea.
