Spanish or English: A Matter of Choice? (Part V)

My first two years back in Los Angeles I sought linguistic refuge among my Spanish-speaking friends. But, at the same time, English was working its way back to the forefront of my brain in steady waves that crashed upon the rapidly expanding shoreline of my first language. To help in the process, when I was away from the safety zone of my group, I eavesdropped on English-speakers as discreetly as possible to learn the art of casual conversation. At home, I’d spend hours watching movies from the 30s, 40s, and 50s—which explains my fascination with actors of this era—to bridge the gap between the way previous generations spoke and the talk I heard on the streets. And I although I didn’t realize it a the time, this is when, slowly—as opposed to the sudden rush with which Spanish swept me off my feet—I started falling in love with English.

Indeed, my love affair with English seemed to take forever to develop when compared to the six-months it took me to fall head over heels for Spanish. Two seemingly endless years went by before I gained enough confidence to take risks in the English-speaking world. (And since I had spent my adolescence in Nicaragua, the stage in human learning when we soak up idiomatic expressions, there was a huge gap in my knowledge, one that took me fifteen years to fill. Most sayings bewildered me when I first heard them. After all, why would anyone or anything be “after my own heart?” Or, what’s an albatross, and what would it be doing around anyone’s neck? Or, for that matter, why would anyone put a monkey on their back? Or, how could a circle be vicious? Expressions like these puzzled and yet fascinated me for a decade and a half when, at last, I had finally heard and assimilated most of them.)

And during my first two years in college I successfully avoided taking classes that required writing. The sting of my first English professor’s pronouncement, that my writing was unreadable, still hurt. But my dodging this bullet came to an abrupt halt when, in order to continue in my major, Business Management, I was required to take a course on Business Writing. When I walked into the room for that first class meeting I was absolutely terrified, expecting the teacher to point toward the door and cast me out.

But the instructor—I can still remember her name, Mrs. Violet Brown—approached teaching like a cheerleader, celebrating every inch her students gained on the playing field.

And with respect to building my confidence as a writer, Mrs. Brown was exactly the type of mentor I needed at that moment of my life. I always enjoyed writing, regardless of the language, but the comments the Freshman English instructor made two years earlier convinced me that I should confine every thought I chose to put on paper to Spanish. Mrs. Brown, however, beginning with the very first assignment, was delighted with what I wrote for the class, and she presented any criticism as gentle suggestions.

We started the semester composing memos. Then we graduated to letters—at first letters with simple requests, such as making a purchase, and ended with letters of complaint or in response to a complaint: a writing task that required tact and a great deal of imagination. We then learned how to produce Public Service Announcements: calls for community action designed to be read over the radio at a normal pace and in exactly thirty seconds: a wonderful exercise in learning how to write economically. Then Mrs. Brown taught us how to produce a House Organ—a newsletter designed to inform employees of a company about useful or fun information related to their jobs. (The craft of putting together a newsletter served me well in several non-teaching jobs that I had following my graduation from college.) And she ended the course teaching us how to write a research paper. It was through Mrs. Brown that I learned the importance of tone, which is paramount if a writer wants to win readers over.

The teacher praised my progress throughout the semester, and she was the first person to mention that I had a nice “voice” on paper. To this day, I credit Mrs. Brown with giving me confidence. Her class, by far—especially considering that I have never taken a single class in “creative writing”—was the most helpful course I ever took on my way to becoming a writer. The debt I owe her is immeasurable, and thanks to her I was able to complete college because I never avoided another course that required writing. In fact, Mrs. Brown taught me that putting together a research paper can actually be a fun and challenging experience—an attitude that was essential in helping me survive graduate school.

In the years that followed graduation, through the jobs I had, I became so entrenched in the English-speaking world that I no longer hesitated to speak or write for an audience. And yet, Spanish remained the language of my soul as, in my mind, it represented the sounds of poetry and passion.

Four years after having completed my bachelor’s degree, I met another great influence in my life, Dr. José Elgorriaga, Chairperson of the Modern Languages Department of California State University in Fresno. Inspired by what he did for a living, I decided to quit a well-paying job as an insurance underwriter to go to graduate school and study Spanish-language literature full-time. And with that rather sudden turn, I switched language once again—for the next six years almost everything I wrote, and most of what I would speak, would be in Spanish.