I know my Spanish grammar is in tatters and my fluency is slipping by the day, writes Judy Bolton-Fasman. Yet I remain fiercely Latinx.
Language is blood; language is family. My relatives were among the Cubans fleeing Castro in the early 1960s. They arrived in Connecticut one harsh winter, where my Cubana mother had settled with my American father. My dad spoke a halting, gringo-inflected Spanish. So we fell into speaking exclusively English at home.
In her country's isolation, my mother inflated its mysteriousness and wonder. As my relatives constantly pointed out, Key West was 90 miles from Havana's shore. Ninety miles was shorthand for how impossibly close yet maddeningly far Cuba was to us. It was the ex-pats' rallying cry to return. After college, I moved to New York and was thrilled that Spanish was everywhere in the city. On the subway, I tested my language competency by reading the Spanish language ads and eavesdropping on the Latinx girls my age gossiping. I loved being surrounded by Spanish and felt like an insider. Having a second language at the ready was also alluring to the guys I dated. Once a secret language between my mother and me, Spanish had finally emerged into the daylight. We, the Latinx, had arrived.
Amidst celebrating Latinx and Hispanic Heritage Month, Sept. 15 - Oct. 15, it jars me to be losing my Spanish. I often think about the thrilling statistic that in 2050,in the United States will be Spanish speakers. Although my fellow Latine almost always recognize my Cuban accent, they do not know my shameful secret; I cannot carry on a nuanced conversation in Spanish.
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