URGENT: Support the DREAM Act

I’d like to urge all my readers to take action on a very important issue.

The Senate may vote on an amendment called the DREAM Act as early as today, and I urge you to support this legislation. The DREAM Act would allow undocumented child immigrants who graduate from US high schools to eventually become US citizens by completing at least two years of college or military service. Currently, it is incredibly difficult for undocumented students, even those who have lived in the US for most of their lives and earned a high GPA in high school, to attend US colleges and universities. As a teacher who has worked with children who would be covered under this law and knows their potential, this issue is very close to my heart.

It’s easy to show your support. You can click here to send a form email through the United Farm Workers–it’s as simple as filling in your name and address. Based on the street address you enter, the site will direct your email to the right senators. Or, if you prefer not to go through the UFW, you can write your own email and go to the Senate’s website to send it directly to your state’s legislators. (And yes, kids can do it, too! You will be able to vote someday, so politicians care what’s important to you.)

Thanks for your help!

 

The Yogi of Acornhoek

One of my colleagues at Amazwi School of Media Arts stopped by the local creche and elementary school in the town of Acornhoek to offer his skills as a yoga instructor. The principal took him up on it–on the spot! Ten minutes later, all of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders cleared the desks and chairs out of one of the classrooms, and around a hundred children packed in shoulder to shoulder. In the midst of the mayhem, Tom sat on top of a table and greeted the students in Tsonga, “Avusheni.” The students immediately settled down, responding in unison in a singsong, “e-e.” “Minjhani,” he asked, how are you? In call-and-response form, they all replied “nkomo” and waited for further instruction.

Over the next hour, students and teachers alike learned yogic breathing, stretches, and massage techniques aimed at helping reduce stress and teaching respect for one’s body. Aside for a few rogue oranges that fell out of children’s pockets and rolled across the floor, nothing could break the kids’ focus. They repeated Tom’s every word and gesture, giggling at the new sensations and at the crazy Australian man in the “Free your soul” t-shirt, giving class from atop a table. It was so popular that he returned again today, this time giving class outside. In the coming days, I’ll be uploading from all three lessons (including the creche). Here’s a start.

 

“So much happening in the villages…”

For my first lesson as a SOMA instructor, we did an exercise aimed at bringing in native language resources to English writing. I started by reading poems from Nicolas Guillen’s El Gran Zoo, as well as some poems that my students in New York wrote in response, in both the original Spanish and in English. Then we worked as a class to write a similar poem, taking a non-living thing and describing it as an animal. (The students chose Gossip as their animal.) After writing a poem together in English, I asked them to write independently in one of their native languages, Tsonga or Sotho. Then I demonstrated my thought process when I translate a poem from Spanish to English, especially what I do when things don’t translate word for word, or when there are many possible translations. The last step was working together to translate their poems into English.

I had a lot of reasons for wanting to do this exercise. Though the students publish in English, they conduct most of their fieldwork in tribal languages, and it’s important to retain as much of the original nuance as possible when quoting sources. On an aesthetic level, too, translation is fertile ground for innovation in the English language. When something doesn’t quite translate, it’s tempting to revert to a cliché, but it’s much more interesting to look for a way to capture the original meaning, complete with all of its images and references. However, for students who have been taught that their English is “not as good,” cliches come with the comfort of conformity, whereas literary brazenness in a second language carries the danger of misinterpretation.

I’m also interested in providing structure for their development as Tsonga journalists. According to the students, there isn’t a single Tsonga-language newspaper in South Africa, despite Tsonga’s status as one of the country’s eleven official languages. While we are currently preparing the students to enter into the English-language market, there is also an unexplored market for Tsonga journalism. The expectation is that the students could transfer the skills they are learning in English into their native languages, but there’s a much better chance of that happening if we actively promote Tsonga writing and are able to guide their use of it as a professional language.

One of the major reasons why we haven’t worked in Tsonga yet is because none of the SOMA instructors speaks the language, so we cannot copy-edit the pieces, and our ability to aid in the writing and revision processes would be seriously limited. Rather than view this as a barrier, I see it as a phenomenal opportunity for transferring a lot of responsibility to the group (another reason why the classroom is a great setting to begin this process).

As a teacher, it was a new experience to lead a writing workshop in a language I don’t speak. I liked the dynamic a lot, because it emphasized the importance of their expertise, as they debated the best way to explain to us the meaning in English of each untranslatable line. The students were critical of each other’s translations and held each other accountable, challenging the authors to explain what they really meant with each verse. For me, this meant stepping back a lot, and watching them argue in a language I can’t even parse. I was there only to bounce back my understanding and offer ways to approach the translation.

My hope is that the students will find some way to make their voices heard, in any language, and turn a profit doing it. Asked how Issue 01 of The Amazwi Villager went over, Siphiwe said that “the stories were about local people, and written by us, so they were interested, but they couldn’t believe it was so thin. There is so much happening in the villages!”

 

Fronteras

Los niños habían de recordar por el resto de su vida la augusta solemnidad con que su padre se sentó en la cabecera de la mesa, devastado por la prolongada vigilia y por el encono de su imaginación, y les reveló su descubrimiento:

–La tierra es redonda como una naranja.

Úrsula perdió la paciencia. “Si has de volverte loco, vuélvete tú solo,” gritó. “Pero no trates de inculcar a los niños tus ideas de gitano.”

Quiera o no, tengo sangre gitana. Tanto he caminado que ningún lugar me acomoda si no es una frontera, un espacio entre el aquí y el allá; tradición y novedad; hoy, ayer, y mañana. Por eso me enamoré de Nueva York y de mi trabajo de maestra—me fascinaron las maneras inteligentísimas en que los niños buscaban acomodar el español al ritmo y la rapidez de Nueva York, y como inventaban un inglés españolizado. Mientras los ortodoxos se quejan de este dialecto chucho, los académicos tratan de elevarlo como una adaptación eficaz del lenguaje a las necesidades de los inmigrantes. (Sabrás en qué campo estás por esta simple prueba: La frase, “llámame para atrás,” ¿te da un ataque de nervios, o te recuerda de una llamada que tienes que devolver?) Por mi parte, lo escuchaba y me asombraba, a veces me reía, a veces me caía mal, pero siempre me cautivaba el proceso de un niño que a la misma vez que va conociendo un mundo que no acaba de construirse, crea un lenguaje para expresarlo.

Como ejemplo, te ofrezco una cita preciosa, dicha por mi alumna Yanira* cuando le dije que trabajaría con un compañero suyo: “Ay, maestra, yo no quiero trabajar con Francisco*, porque Francisco es un boy y yo quiero trabajar con una girl.” La Real Academia vería esta mezcla como una contaminación del idioma, pero el buen observador sabe que la RAE no ofrece una palabra adecuada para lo que Yanira quiso decir. En todas las culturas, las interacciones entre niños y niñas siguen reglas distintas; Yanira aprendió por la televisión y la conducta de sus compañeros aquí nacidos que en EEUU, a los nueve años, los niños y las niñas se rechazan. Boys are gross. Decir lo mismo en español, “los niños son asquerosos,” no significa nada semejante. Entonces Yanira hizo un ajusto muy astuto a su lenguaje.

Mi trabajo de maestra de español también me forzaba a navegar entre dos polos opuestos: el de reconocer y valorar el Spanglish (como por mi naturaleza suelo hacer), y el de insistir en un español “puro” o académico. El mismo debate existe hace tiempo ya acerca de cómo apreciar el inglés afro-americano y a la misma vez enseñar un inglés “blanco”, “académico”, que le dé al alumno negro acceso a la universidad y el mercado laboral controlado por los blancos. En el caso del inglés negro, ya tenemos muchos modelos que confirman no solamente que el inglés negro puede incorporar lenguaje y estructuras de la academia blanca, sino que el inglés “blanco” no es adecuado para hablar de la experiencia negra en Estados Unidos. Toni Morrison, ganadora del Premio Nóbel de Literatura; el poeta Langston Hughes; y la autora y antropóloga Zora Neale Hurston son algunos de los muchos escritores que han desarrollado una voz simultáneamente académica y vernacular: un idioma negro y profundamente literario.

Claro está que la ruta desde un colegio urbano al Premio Nóbel tiene menos pista que despistes, y ahí me encontré en otro espacio poco definido: maestra de español para hispanohablantes en Nueva York. Y para complicarlo aun más: soy blanca, y mi primer idioma es el inglés. Planteo la pregunta que nos hizo Silvio Rodríguez algunos años atrás:

Compañeros de historia,
tomando en cuenta lo implacable
que debe ser la verdad, quisiera preguntar
me urge tanto,
¿qué debiera decir, qué fronteras debo respetar?

Contesto con una respuesta de maestra de geografía: las fronteras son límites inventadas por el imaginario humano. Tan pronto como a uno se le ocurra inventar una nueva frontera, a otro se le ocurrirá cruzarla.