Author: Mandy Chen

This essay is both interesting and deep. It starts with a very easy to read anecdote, details are very vivid: “always together, speaking Spanish”, “mysterious books”, “wrapped in brown shopping-bag paper” (this one appeared again later) and “closed firmly behind them”. Naturally I had the feeling when I finished the first paragraph: tell me more! Why do these details sound so mysterious? Also these words are those kind of details that a child would notice. I was attracted by this essay right away.

Later the author went to elementary school. On the first day, he saw his mother’s face “dissolve in a watery blur behind the pebbled-glass door”. After I read the whole essay and went back, I quickly realized that later, a similar scene with different emotions attached appeared. Finally after the anecdote, family background comes in. “A few neighbors would smile and wave at us. We waved back.” A short sentence creates a sense of silence. “Conveyed through those sounds was the pleasing, smoothing, consoling reminder that one was at home.” Adjectives in a row strengthen the feeling. “At six years of age, I knew just enough words for my mother to trust me on errands to stores one block away – but no more.” The “just” and “but no more” are used really good. The author talks about how he was a listening child. True. I can understand the feeling of being a sensitive kid. The author can even notice this kind of detail as a child as how “listeners would usually lower their heads to hear better what I was trying to say” (the detail reappeared later), and how the sound in their house changed when the door opened because English came in. He and his brothers and sisters were isolated to be outsiders of the American society because they could not speak fluent English. The author, thus, found the difference between public sound and private sound. Furthermore, public individuality and private individuality. The description of the classroom memory is really impressive: “‘Richard, stand up. Don’t look at the floor. Speak up. Speak to the entire class, not just to me!’ But I couldn’t believe English could be my language to use. (In part, i did not want to believe it.) I continued to mumble. I resisted the teacher’s demand. (Did I somehow suspect that once I learned this public language my family life would be changed?) Silent, waiting for the bell to sound, I remained dazed, different, afraid.” Like before, here three adjectives are used in a row. Language, or rather, sound and the author’s childhood memory are closely linked together in his mind.

From his own experiences and feelings, he disagrees with bilingual supporters’ opinion that the family language can help achieve his individuality. Contrarily, he felt the separateness more strongly. These bilingual educators also hold the point that their home gives them individuality. But he does not think so. He argues there are two types of individuality. One is public, one is intimate (private). Individuality can only be achieved through achieving public individuality. It is a very interesting point. However, later in this essay he says that after he could finally speak fluent English, strangely, he couldn’t speak Spanish fluently. And then he was mocked by his family members. And in some way, he lost his private individuality. Does he really agree with himself? It seems that the inability to speak fluent Spanish made him suffered. And maybe, he felt bad about achieving the so-called public individuality. As he says in the essay: “For my part, I felt that by learning English I had somehow committed a sin of betrayal…Rather, I felt I had betrayed my immediate family.” Maybe that’s why the tone is strong (at least to me) when arguing about public individuality. It reminds me of how one would try to prove something or persuade others particularly when they actually have doubts about it and are trying to make themselves believe it too. It looks like some kind of compensation to the author to think that public individuality is the most important and without which he couldn’t have achieved individuality, so that he wouldn’t feel so bad about losing private individuality to some extend.

Interestingly, some repetitions occurred. The schoolbooks covered with brown shopping-bag paper and people lowering their heads to listen to the author speaking Spanish (instead of English). Later he had the new discovery: the intimacy is not created by language itself, but the intimates. “I would dishonor our intimacy by holding on to a particular language an calling it my family language. Intimacy cannot be trapped within words; it passes through words. It passes. Intimacy leave the room. Door closed. Faces move away from the window. Time passes, and voices recede into the dark. Death finally quiets the voice. There is no way to deny it, no way to stand in the crowd claiming to utter ones’ family language.” It makes me think of how some international students become especially patriotic after they go abroad. They post how they miss home and wish they can go back. But why? Maybe they map their feelings towards their dear friends, family or even food onto their home country. Isn’t it strange? What they love is actually just memory. At the end of this essay, the author, when looking at the photo of his dear grandmother in her funeral, did not see the familiar face, but a “public” face, the face she had when “the clerk at Safeway asked her some question and I would need to respond”.

Aye, that’s what he means by “death finally quiets the voice”.