strangerness
I so did not appreciate this when I was a kid! I didn't know any way to get away from it. or maybe I did. I immersed myself among Brasilians, and stayed um Norteamericano. I did, but I spoke Portuguese like a Brasilian kid once removed. that is, now, looking back, I don't doubt that Brasilian kids would have heard the foreigner speaking at their language, saying what they said but not quite in the right situations, or half a beat behind. but I didn't know that then. I knew my strangerness from a loyalty I felt that I knew they did not. I knew UnitedStatesean history, or thought I did. I knew about the founders, knew the pretty-story version of the ideas that went into the Declaration, the Constitution, the Pan-American organization, and knew we (the country portrayed in Brasilian newspapers, in Time, and in The Reader's Digest) didn't live up to them. but we could, couldn't we? mightn't we? I mean, there was Eleanor Roosevelt fighting for the United Nations and what it might mean to the world. oh well. before I could resolve that issue to any satisfaction, slam-bam! I was thrown into this country speaking something like English with a northeastern Brasilian accent. people I thought of as Spanish-speaking kids could understand me better than the white kids I was supposed to hang out with. I worked desperately for three years to learn to speak English as if that were normal, and at least learned to speak written English. but I did forget Portuguese, or made it damn near unreachable. and I discovered, sorta, that I was illiterate in idiom. if someone said, "I'm all tied up" (and people useta say that), I wondered why. if I could see them, there was definitely not a rope or even a string on them. but even more important were the phrases that every child knew for six months, phrases that baffled the grownups - just about the time grownups figured out the phrases, kids quit using them - and me. so even after I conquered my accent, or thought I had, I still spoke fractured English, just mended well enough to get by most of the time. and all that history is still with me. I frequently find myself stumped for a phrase that a real American would just drop without thinking about it. I frequently have to invent a way of saying what I mean when a real American would just use a phrase everyone knows. but that's very useful in poetry, isn't it? being a stranger to the language means it's always a creation for me, and that creation happens within the boundaries and constraints set by the rules of English I learned in those three years when I was desperately trying to become an American. but it's not just the language. the language is just the most obvious way I stumble in real life, among real people. the culture is a minefield of surprises. I'm forever learning ohmygodIdidsomethinggauche. I have become more graceful at sidestepping the consequences of my gaucheries, and using them to learn about the culture that I am supposed to think of as home. I think it gives me a chance to find and see oddnesses that other people glide by as normal. so yes, I appreciate my strangerness - most of the time. there are times I wish I could give it up.
No comments:
Post a Comment