Maria Bustillos: Well, my mom died … It’s going to be two years ago. And I used to speak Spanish with her every day, or pretty much every day. And now I don’t speak Spanish, like at all; I mean (a) I’m in Scotland right now, and (b) I’m estranged from most of my family, because they’re mostly Republicans, and the ones who aren’t Republicans don’t speak Spanish.
I was the first one of my family born in this country, and I had a rebellious attitude about participating in Latin American culture until I became an adult. I was taught to “assimilate,” and found my whole soul in English, as a teenager. But I still always spoke Spanish. I took that for granted. And I really miss it now; there’s a dimension of my psyche that has just sort of evaporated. I’ve come to realize that there’s so much more to all of this than politics, or “ESL” or immigration, or assimilation.
So tell me what your relationship is with Spanish.
She’s said that she’d just speak to me all day long, and I’d just sort of nod along. And then I quickly became really hyperverbal, I think because I was around the world’s, or at least California’s, most prolific chatterbox. And so it just rubbed off on me. Do you know what I mean?
MB: Yeah. I mean your English is so stupendous, I love your English. But you spoke Spanish first?
MG: Yeah. Like in the house specifically, with my mother, and then my parents made a decision to raise all of their children bilingually. They decided that our father would speak to us in English, and our mother would speak to us in Spanish. They really, really, really abided by that agreement. I’m 45, and my dad still talks to me in English, and my mom in Spanish. The only time that I hear my mother speaking English is with people who are unable to speak Spanish. Or on an extremely rare occasion, she’ll speak English when she’s angry.
And so I get scared when I hear her speak English, because I’m like, “Somebody’s in trouble, and I don’t know if it’s me.” So that’s like my alarm, that’s my warning system; is the woman speaking English? If she’s speaking English, there’s trouble. So …
MB: How’s her English?
MG: Her English is great. She has an accent that is very noticeable, and she’s not at all interested in losing it. And so when she speaks, it’s clear to everybody who has heard Mexican speakers of English where she’s from, but she really owns it. She taught elementary school for 20 years.
My favorite mistakes that my mother makes in English happen when she confuses proverbs, or aphorisms or adages. And I think that she often improves them. Once she was looking at my friend and me and with a totally serious face, she goes, “It’s the law of the cookie and the way the jungle crumbles.” And it was beautiful.
MB: Poetry.
MG: I was like, “This is better.”
MB: My mom used to explain that a meddling person was “getting into my case.” So lovely.
So, you’re very close with your mom.
MG: Yeah. I love my mom a lot. (...)
MB: (...) How’s your writing, and do you read Spanish?
MG: I can read Spanish, but I need a lot of help writing it. I don’t have any formal education in Spanish composition. So I can read it competently and often do, but I struggle to write.
MB: Same.
MG: And I cannot accent it for the life of me. My mother has tried to teach me several times and I just sort of … I just treat the accents like pepper, wherever it falls, it falls.
[Both laughing helplessly]
MB: Go for it. That looks good! Oh man. (...)
MB: Yeah I love them. People ask me, do you speak Spanish fluently? And my stock reply is like, yeah, but like a really foul-mouthed eight-year-old.
MG: That’s what public fluency is, there are I think infinite ways to be fluent in a language and I think people who can understand everything but struggle to speak are fluent, but they experience extreme anxiety prior to speaking, and I think that anxiety is like… it’s socioculturally produced.
MB: Agreed. There’s a psychological moment to participating as a speaker in any culture. I know a lot of people, native speakers in various languages, who cannot have a conversation without gigantic anxiety because they’re being called on to produce language, and it’s frightening to them.
MG: It’s really terrifying for certain groups of people. I noticed that, when I was teaching high school, that basic—what we might call small talk, it seemed very challenging for about half of my students, and it wasn’t necessarily because these students spoke one language at home and another at school. They were unaccustomed to verbally socializing with one another, and they were really unaccustomed to low-stakes socializing verbally, low-stakes chatting. So I did a couple of lessons on small talk, because I was a social studies teacher—I taught civics and economics and history, but I would have, sometimes, these life skills components that I would weave into class.
MG: I explained how small talk is useful, I gave them examples of it and then I would have them practice with one another, and then I would also invite them to practice with me if they wanted to.
MB: Maybe the concept of triviality is native to people like us who are just naturally blabby, but there’s a certain kind of personality that considers speech significant and important, formal, it’s a commemoration of their lives at that moment, so they’re unable to unite that with triviality. People like us just look at that and think, what’s your problem? This all bullshit, none of it matters.
MG: My male students were especially challenged, because boys are not culturally or socially encouraged to engage in low-stakes chatter and so I really encouraged them. I had put down a list of common small talk subjects and encouraged them to practice with one another, because that way they wouldn’t have the added anxiety of talking to a girl.
I remember one time this student came up behind me, and he tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around and I was like, “Yes José, what can I help you with?” And he’s like, “I’m here for some small talk.”
[Both howling]
MB: Oh my God, that’s priceless.
MG: One of those golden teaching moments.
MB: It explains why there’s sports, because otherwise they would be lost.
MG: Exactly. They need human contact, but they create these limits around how they can socialize, and they’re just such artificial silly limitations and barriers that are so easily removed, because they’re just really absurd fictions.
by Maria Bustillos, POPULA | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. Another Maria post. I love her writing and didn't realize this is where she hangs out.]
