Walking into the faintly memorable room, familiar eyes stare at me, and I stare back. My mom's side of the family in San Antonio, Texas, whom I haven't seen in more than 7 years, gather in the living room. Most of my uncles and aunts favor Spanish over English, and I've always known this, but they greeted me in English as I came up to each of them. My mother notices and speaks to me in Spanish to let everyone else know that I hadn't completely been stripped of my Spanish speaking abilities. They were treating me with special attention when, in reality, I could understand them. A few of my cousins don't speak or understand the language, so I didn't understand why I was seen was an outcast. I soon came to find out that some cousins assumed…show more content… I use Spanish in my own home, keeping in touch with my heritage, which some of my family didn't realize. My own identity or culture may not be endless Spanish, but I shouldn't feel ashamed of that. My concept of bilingualism, is that a person’s culture and identity is nothing to be apologetic for.
Both Espada and Rodriguez have their own interpretation of bilingualism. Espada, being a very strongly opinionated person, has a clear concept of what bilingualism means to him, and he displays it throughout his essay, The New Bathroom Policy at English High School. Espada has worked as a tenant lawyer and has had plenty of encounters with language discrimination. He has overall seen English as a negative thing, because when Spanish is trying to be taken away by non-Spanish…show more content… In his essay, Hunger of Memory, he relives his childhood as the overwhelming transition from Spanish to his new, English-only school. He realized that there was no hope for trying to deny English, as he could not escape it, instead he decides to embrace it and become Richard, rather than, Ricardo. Though in the end, he feels like an American citizen. Different from Espada, Rodriguez is a person to not question when he’s told to do something, whereas Espada refuses to have his voice suppressed. For this reason, Rodriguez's idea of bilingualism is that it's easier to adapt to the English language and culture, than to reject it. Rodriguez tells the story of when he realizes that English is unavoidable, even in his own home: “But I had no place to escape with Spanish. (The spell was broken) My brother and sisters were speaking English in another part of the house. ...Only then did I determine to learn classroom English” (Rodriguez 86-93). Rodriguez uses parenthesis to further clarify that the only special bond that him and his family shared was through Spanish, and he felt that was taken away from him. He also didn't feel confident in his English and for that to be the only language spoken, was a big shift for him. Realizing there was no way to outrun English, he embraced it instead. Furthermore, after Rodriguez persistently worked hard over a long period of time, he finally began to feel more
