When we discovered that we were going to have a child, one of my husband’s fondest wishes was that I would bequeath to our offspring the language spoken in my parents’ home. I smiled at my spouse, looked down lovingly at my swelling abdomen, and promised that I’d try. But even while I spoke the words, I knew that my heart would never be in it.

Being an intelligent, sensitive person, my husband understood the uniqueness of each individual, despite color, race, or religion. But being the scion of a Midwestern Quaker grandmother, he was no foreigner to bigotry.

Before we married, his mother proudly informed me that her son had blue blood in his veins and that the Swallows of Ohio had tombstones dating back to the Mayflower. In my youth and naivete, I wondered whether being blue-blooded could mean you had some disease in your background.

Assimilation, depending on what side of the fence you’re on, can be a curse or a blessing. For me, it was a blessing. No matter how hard my devoted parents tried to instill pride in, and respect for, my Cuban heritage, I was painfully aware that our society’s Spanish-speaking members were at the bottom of the economic scale. I was only too happy to shed “Martinez” for “Gonnella.”

After I entered school in 1957, my teachers drilled us daily in pronunciation of the “ch” words, so that we’d say “church” instead of “shurch,” “chimney” instead of “shimney.” Although the lessons improved our English, they also served as a reminder that we were different and spoke incorrectly.

The school system had no bilingual teachers in those days. Now when I hear impassioned debates over bilingual education, I wonder just how I was able to survive a system that was totally monolingual, when all we spoke at home was Spanish. I realize now that the educational system taught us well, but at a price. Some of the psychological scars can never be erased.

I know what it feels like for a child to go through school and never identify ethnically with any of the dispensers of knowledge and wisdom. It was most devastating for the boys, eroding their shaky self-esteem, which was cloaked in the false security of machismo.

I was born in this great country and love it as much as any Mayflower descendent. But I’m not blind to our shortcomings. There are pervasive evils that can destroy us Americans, unless we start to care about and appreciate one another, despite our differences.

What good are our universities, when they’re surrounded by crumbling cities? How can we hope to be a nation for all the people, when our best neighborhoods, jobs, and health services are reserved for the affluent and white?

Are there no Don Quixotes out there willing to do battle solely for the purpose of restoring our moral health and stability? In our insatiable consumerism, can we be sowing the seeds of our own destruction?

I am grateful to my homeland for freedom of speech and for so many other liberties that are denied around the world. It was only in my adulthood that I realized how precious and fragile a commodity freedom really is. But it was also in my adulthood that I realized that in my hurry to become a “real” American, I robbed my children of the knowledge of another language and culture that would have enriched their lives.



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