I remember when my father’s nephew came to the U.S. and stayed with us. He was in his mid-twenties, a bubbly, effusive young man. He smiled a lot and seemed thrilled to be with us and in the U.S. One day we stood on the sidewalk in front of our house in the Bronx. He put his arm around my teenage brother casually, then took my brother’s earlobe between two fingers and rubbed it affectionately, as he would do with all of us, and as he probably did in moments of affection in his culture. I remember my father saying, in Serbo-Croatian, ”Men don’t do that here.” He was training his nephew in American ways—do not be affectionate, especially with a man; you’re a man and you shouldn’t do that here. I can only begin to imagine what experiences my father must have had that led him to make such a strong statement.
Those of us who teach English to people new to U.S. society teach our students much more than the language. We are role models who bring our own experiences, culture, lifestyles, philosophies, and politics to our students. Among all the struggles immigrant students encounter adjusting to the U.S. or another country, speaking the language correctly is minor. They have a myriad of pressures on them—jobs, children, making ends meet. Many of them used to be professionals in their countries and are now working-class, or living in exile. Do we demand too much of them? Do we give them the opportunity to explore the clash of old and new cultures, find their place in a new society, and learn important survival skills? Can we help them learn to be circumspect or to get support with personal problems? Is this part of our job?
The key to success in college, I learned, was knowing how to express myself with a certain polish, both orally and in writing. But I only learned this after going through the mill of painful experiences. Empowerment, confidence, and class are important factors in achieving command of a language. As I went through school and tried to advance, I became more and more intimidated by the act of speaking. Educated in Roman Catholic schools, I was never really taught critical thinking skills and was not encouraged to work with relevant material.
I began writing on my own to offset feeling marginalized as a working-class student from an immigrant family and as then a woman who didn’t want a traditional marriage. When I did marry, I keenly felt a class difference with my husband and with people in academia as well. I learned to advocate for my people rather than submit to the stereotypes. I learned to be fearless with language once I accepted myself as I was. Then I could be responsible for my own life. Because of my own experiences I am now mindful of my students’ dilemmas and I want to find ways to help them achieve self-acceptance through language.
I was a quiet, self-conscious child, worried about displeasing the teacher and about the other kids laughing at me. I remember Miss Strazza, my first-grade teacher, how patient and attentive she was with me, even with fifty-plus students in the class! Perhaps she felt sorry for me. I don’t remember the kids laughing at me specifically, but I remember her defense of me and my struggle with English. Toward the end of the school year I came down with the German measles. My biggest regret was losing Miss Strazza as my teacher.
Although I was born in New York, when I started first grade I only knew Serbo-Croatian. English was my second language. My siblings and I were different from the rest of the kids in our predominantly Irish and Jewish neighborhood. No other student in my St. Nicholas of Tolentine grammar school class spoke another language besides English. This felt lonely. Many of the people we met did not even know where Yugoslavia was, yet it was the center of our life as a family.
Perhaps the children at school noticed my accent or thought there was something funny about my grammar. I remember that my younger cousin always spoke with a slight Yugoslav accent, the o’s shorter, the th more like a d. Perhaps I too sounded like this and left articles out and put in an a here and there for rhythm: “The pencil is a pointy.” Maybe I spoke slowly. I don’t know. I was just different.
“How can you teach them that low-life island Bodulski!” a translation of what my father said when he was angry with my mother. Bodulski is a dialect of Croatian spoken on the Dalmatian Islands. Born in Montenegro, my father identified as a Serb and wanted us children to learn proper Serbian, the “superior” language. Politics ranked high on the list of what my parents fought about. My own views about the content of these arguments included approving of Tito’s leadership as a Partisan during World War II and admiring how the Communists were able to bring the warring Balkan ethnic groups together.
I felt the power of language—it was palpable during these arguments. Words hurt. When I grew more curious about the specifics of my parents’ fury, I’d gently ask my mother the meaning of some word I heard uttered with such vehemence. “Where did you hear that?” she would lash out. “I don’t ever want to hear you say that again!” or if she happened to be in a sadder mood, “You don’t want to know what that means. It’s a bad word.” How words would stay with me for days, reverberate, make me cry and wonder! How strongly they affected my parents!
My mother speaks with an accent still, and my father had a thicker one. His was almost Germanic. He had learned German while in a Nazi prison camp for three years during World War II. Not very literate in English, my father was an embarrassment to me. He was smart, but there were many things he’d rather do than read. He built a pigeon coop for his beloved birds and planted roses, hydrangeas, tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers in our Bronx garden.
My mother, the intellectual one, loved to read and listen to opera. Much of my attraction to culture and language comes from her sharing these interests with me. What drew her to European culture and music as a girl, growing up in a rocky little village where she had to tend goats during her free time? She learned Italian when the Italian Fascists occupied her Croatian village for most of the war. She was eighteen when she escaped turbulent Yugoslavia to come to the U.S.
When all was quiet and the village church empty, as a teenager, Mom would walk up to the great church organ and play “Va, Pensiero,” the inspirational choral aria from Verdi’s opera Nabuco, in which the Hebrews sing about their captivity. It mirrored Mom’s captivity under the Fascists, and then the Nazis. In Italian she’d sing, “Oh, my country so lovely and lost! / Oh remembrance so dear and so fraught with despair! / Golden harp of the prophetic seers, / why dost thou hang mute upon the willow?”
So whose language was I learning? It was all very confusing. My parents spoke various languages as a result of where they were born and who subjugated their country. I learned to speak the language of the U.S., but it didn’t feel like it was my language. No one else in school spoke my parents’ language. Now I see why immigrants stayed in the cocoon of their own national communities rather than venture out into English. These were a communities that knew and acted out their history and culture, preserved it through dances and other cultural gatherings, and talked about the politics that was specific to a time and place. The feeling of belonging was life.
While I felt marginal because of my parents’ culture, school became an odd kind of refuge for me. No one cared to know anything about Yugoslavia, yet I felt drawn to my adopted English language and literature. I was learning to be an American. At the same time, there was some mythical ideal that I didn’t really understand but was supposed to live up to, the message I was getting from my parents—how to be a good wife, following old traditions. In this new culture, where I was growing up, I was in love with learning.