Esperanza

I remember when that was going down. A one-world language that combined all the languages for everyone everywhere.

I used to resent what seemed to be the intrusion of the Spaniosh language. For instances getting on the bus and being nervous hearing another language spoken.

Over the past 5 years I have gone through a powerful change in this regard.

I LIKE to see a spanosh or lantino or puerto Rican or Mexican face as I used to do when I was younger and trying to make peace for the world of Black and White. I LIKE to hear the language spokiend

I also LOVED EBONIX–do I have that right?

But for spanish speaking men and women I just knowlet a major ie cas. ANd the Mexicans.

This is pertaining to the Wall and the immigration crisis–I have been out of touch with my onw problems when I left off with that and I do understand what a proviliege it is to have a safe and comfortable home to live in after mnany difficult years.

I just love language, I was a lit major. But I also have been through the wringer in life ande on ;sych wards and in marriage in an an all-American town in Sosuth Florida. Have I said that I am British? (born in America while they were on a long honeymoon here.)

But then they staid.

And my mother startted saying creepy things about our being “anglo-americans.” Me myu brothe4r and our siste4r.

THEY were British and we were sedcondary to that. And I know my mother’s feelings about American and American. from when I was young. She’s dead now. the real story of my life is just that I desperately desperately desperately whanted to fit in (in public grade school) and then got lost on the longest journey to find myu own way.

And of course at one point I went through that phase of an immigrant when you realize all the fundamental flaws of this nationn built on New World soil trod by the feet of the natives to this stunning, grand, and beautiful land.

And as if that wasn’t bad enbough we imported slaves…

English kid left alone trying to understand …the bizarre complexity and contradictions that make America the great nation that it still is…

But. i finally arrived at a place where I understand the latino culture (I am a neophyte at this) well enough to understand that they have every much reason to be here as us white or “Caucasion: inhabitantts.

For one thing,, I came to a place where I realized that cultures and civilizations do die, not just here be in so many places around the worlddddd; and America 9is just one of them,

People in cultures and civilations of all kinds sometimes do terrible things to one another. (Some one once said to me, “people do all kinds of things to each other in relationsips”

And so it is in warring nations. within the nation of America/.

I dislike the song, “This land is our lant…..” Mayvbe it was written BECAUSE it is not. This land belongs to the Native America for so long as there eno0ugh to keep breathing and repopulate.

South America.

]Gosh it is CONFUSING to be in America in any way let alone as a y9oung b oy or girl born to an English mother: Before I was to the hospital the last time I saw an image of myy mother running terrified through the woulds of ancieth A eirca as she would be skinned alive by a native and WAS being skinned aloive by the locals.

A scaloping for the men; for women–skinned alive. That’s what we were fighting and there was no right or wrong in it. Peopole do. Nations conquer. and the WORST OF THEM is the British and the Spanish. Nobody ever even thinks about that.

That was a walk on the wild side.

Locally in my own small life,, I am noting that I for one no longer object to a dual English-speaking and Spanish speakinjg ntaion. Inm my own mind that was a problem before As I grow in maturity and understanding I realize that things that seemed ridiculous to me at one time are the opposite, the very heart of this “New World.”

I wrote this befcause my father supported the Esperanza movement. At the time I didn’t realize he thought about anything but electrons.

And I was impressed..

Like him, I enjoy both Bfritish and American life and language in America. My mother would nt get off the stick about being English, God rest her soul. This cost us.