Always living in spanish by marjorie agosin

Do you think Ngugi is being unduly harsh when he asserts, "Thus children were

turned into witch-hunters and in the process were being taught the lucrative vaiue

of being a traitor to one's immedidte community" (para.9)? Explain your response.

At the end of section I, Ngugi asks two questions (para. 14). In what ways does

section II provide a framework for him to answef those questions? How does

section II lay the foundation for section III? What are the "three aspects or elements" of language as communication and lan-

grageas culture that Ngugi discusses (para. 15)? What does Ngugi mean by "the set of spiritual eyeglasses" in this statement: "Culture embodies those moral, ethical and aesthetic values, the set of spiritual

eyeglasses, through which [human beings] come to view themselves and their place in the universe" (para.20)? What is the purpose of footnote 5, where Ngugi calls the German philosopher

Hegel "the nineteenth-ceotury Hitler of the intellect"? Would the tone of the

essay change if this assertion was part of the body of the text?

Does Ngugi appeal principally to logos or pathos in this piece? Cite specific pas-

sages to support your response. Ngugi argues that a specific culture can be transmitted only through the language native to that culture. Explain why you agree or disagree. Tilke into account

American immigrant cultures where the generation born in the United States is

no longer fluent in the original language. Compare and contrast the viewpoints of Richard Rodriguez in "Aria" (p. 509)

and of Ngugi wa Thiong'o in this essay. How are the experiences of the immi- grant and the colonized similar and different?

Alway s Living in Sp anish MenIonIE AcosiN

Humon rights octivist, oufhor, cnd professor ot Wellesley College, Mcriorie Agosin

{b. '19551 is o descendont of Rursion ond Austrion Jews. She wos born in Mory-

tnd ond roised in Chile, but she left for the United Ststes with her porents when the dictotor Augusto Pinochet overlhrew the government of Sqlvodor Allende. Agosin's writingi reflect her heritoge, especiolly the experience of Jewish refugees, ond rh" hos received internotionol occlqim for her work on beholf of poor women in developing countries. Agosin'hos wriiten mdny books of fiction, memoirs, poetry, ond essoys. These include the collection o[ bilinguol poems entitled Deor'Anne.

Fronkfigg{b ACross ond a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile {1995}, sbout her mother; Always from Somewhere Else: A Memoir of My Chilean lewish Father tl 9981; snd At the Threshold of Memoqy; New snd .Selecfe d Poems (2003). In the following essoy, writfen in 1999, Agosin explores the possionote connection she feels with Sponish, her first longuoge.

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AGoSiN . ALWAYS LIVING IN SPANISH 557

'$ n the evenings in the northern hemisphere,I repeat the ancient ritual that .Li I observed as a child in the southern hemisphere: going out while the night

is still warm and trying to recognize the stars as it begins to grow dark silently. In the sky of my country, Chile, that long and wide stretch of land that the poets

blessed and dictators abused,I could easily name the stars: the three Marias, the Southern Cross, and the three Lilies, names of beloved and courageous women.

But here in the United States, where I have lived since I was a young girl, the

solitude of exile makes me feel that so littie is mine, that not even the sky has the same constellations, the trees and the fauna the same names or sounds, or the rubbish the same smell. How does one recover the familiar? How does one name the unfamiliar? How can one be another or live in a foreign language? These are the dilemmas of one who writes in Spanish and lives in translation.

Since my earliest childhood in Chile I lived with the tempos and the melodies of a multiplicity of tongues: German, Yiddish, Russian, Turkish, and many Latin songs. Because everyone was from somewhere else, my relatives laughed, S?I1g, and fought in a Babylon of languages. Spanish was reserved for matters of

extreme seriousness, for commercial transactions, or for illnesses, but everyone's mother tongue was always associated with the memory of spaces inhabited in the past: the shtetl, the flowering and vast Vienna avenues, the minarets of Turkey,

and the Ladino whispers of Toledo. When my paternal grandmother sang oid

songs in Turkish, her voice and body assumed the passion of one who was there

in the city of Istanbul, gazingby turns toward the west and the east. Destiny and the always ambiguous nature of history continued my family's

enforced migration, and because of it I, too, became one who had to live and speak in translation. The disappearances, torture, and clandestine deaths in my country in the early seventies drove us to the United States, that other America that looked with suspicion at those who did not speak English and especially those who came from the supposedly uncivilized regions of Latin America. I had left a dangerous place that was my home, only to arrive in a dangerous piace that was not: a high

school in the small town of Athens, Georgia, where my poor English and my accent were the cau$e of ridicule and insult. The only way I could recover my usurped country and my Chilean childhood was by continuing to write in Spanish, the same way my grandparents had sung in their own tongues in diasporic sites.

The new and learned English language did not fit with the visceral emotions

and themes that my poetry contained, but by writing in Spanish I could recover fra- grances, spoken rhythms, and the passion of my own identity. Daily I felt the need

to translate myself for the strangers living all around me, to tell them why we were in Georgia, why we ate differently, why we had fled, why my accent was so thick, and why I did not look Hispanic. Only at night, writing poems in Spanish, could I return to my senses, and soothe my own sorrow over what I had left behind.

This is how I became a Chilean poet who wrote in Spanish and lived in the southern United States. And then, one day, a poem of mine was translated and published in the English language. Finally, for the first time since I had left Chile,

558 cHAPTERq. LANGUAGE

I felt I didn't have to explain myself. My poem, expressed in another language,

spoke for itself . . . and for me. Sometimes the austere sounds of English help me bear the solitude of know-

ing that I am foreign and so far away from. those about whom I write. I must

admit I would like more opportunities to read in Spanish to people whose lan-

guage and culture is also mine, to join in our common heritage and in the feast of

our sounds. I would also like readers of English to understand the beauty of the

spoken word in Spanish, that constant flow of oxytonic and paraoxytonic sylla-

bles (Verde que te quiero verdo), the joy of writing - of dancing - in another

language. I believe that many exiles share the unresolvable torment of not being

able to live in the language of their childhood. I miss that undulating and sensuous language of mine, those baroque de-

scriptions, the sense of being and feeling that Spanish gives me. It is perhaps for

this reason that I have chosen and will always choose to write in Spanish. Nothing

else from my childhood world remains. My country seems to be frozen in ges-

tures of silence and oblivion. My relatives have died, and I have grown up not

knowing a young generation of cousins and nieces and nephews. Many of my

friends disappeared, others were tortured, and the most fortunate, like me, be-

came guardians of memory. For us, to write in Spanish is to always be in active pursuit of memory. I seek to recapture a world lost to me on that sorrowful after-

noon when the blue electric sky and the Andean cordillera bade me farewell. On

that, my last Chilean day, I carried under my arm my innocence recorded in a

little blue notebook I kept even then. Gradually that diary filled with memo-

randa, poems written in free verse, descriptions of dreams and of the thresholds

of my house surrounded by cherry trees and gardenias. To write in Spanish is for

me a gesture of survival. And because of translation, mI memory has now

become a part of the memory of many others. Tlanslators are not traitors, as the proverb says, but rather splendid friends in

this great human community of language,

Exploring the Text

1. How would you describe Marjorie Agoslnt opening strategy in the first two para-

graphs? How effective are the two paragraphs in capturing the reader's attention

and establishing the author's ethos? 2. What does Agosin mean by the allusion to "a Babylon of languages" (para. 3)?

3. What is the effect of the following statement, an example of antithesis, byAgosin: "I had left a dangerous place that was my home, only to arrive in a dangerous place that was not" (para.4)?

a. Why is the first translation of a poem of Agosin's meaningful for her? 5. List the ways Agosin describes Spanish. How would you describe these descrip-

tive terms? Contrast these descriptions with the way Agosln refers to English.

How do the differences contribute to the effectiveness of her essay?

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BERKOWTTZ AND McFAUL ' STUDYING ISLAM, STRENGTHENING THE NATION 559

What is Agosin's thesis, or claim, in this essay? Find a sentence that seems closest

to a directly stated thesis. What does Agosin mean when she says,"To write in Spanish is for me a gesture of

survival" (para.8)? How would you des*ibe the tone of this essay? Cite specific passages to support

your response. This essay was published in Poets dy Writers, a magazine for writers. Discuss why

and howAgosin appeals to this audience. Agosin alludes to the way her "grandparents had sung in their own tongues

in diasporic sites" (para. 4). What does sute mean by "diasporic sites"? Are they

literal geographical places? Discuss the concept of diaspora as it applies to a

group in the contemporary world (for example, the African diaspora, the Chi-

nese diaspora).

Studying Islam, Strengthening the Nation Pernn BEnrowITz AND MlcseEr McFlur

Peter Berkowik (b. 1959) teoches ot George Moson University School of Low in Virginio. He hos writfen widely on topics reloted to Americon constitutionslism ond the Middle Eost. Michael McFoul (b. 1963) leoches in the depcrtment of politicol science at Stonford University. An ossociote ol the Cornegie Endowment for Inter- notionol Peqce ond o well-known scholqr ond outhor, McFoul is on expert on Uniied Stotes*Russion relotions and on Americqn efforts to promote democrocy sbrosd. Both Berkowitz ond McFoul ore reseorch fellows ot the Hoover Instituiion on Wor, Revoluiion, ond Peoce, o public policy reseorch cenfer ot Stonford Univer- sity. The following essoy oppeored in the Wosh ington Posf in 2005.

iit remains painfullytrue, more than three years after Sept. 11, that even $ trighty educated Americans know little about the Arab Middle East. And it

is embarrassing how little our universities have changed to educate our nation

and train experts on the wider Middle East. For believers in a good liberal arts education, it has long been a source of

consternation that faculties in political science, history, economics and sociology

lack scholars who knowArabic or Persian and understand Islam. Since Sept. 11 it

has become clear that this abdication of responsibility is more than an educa-

tional problem: It also poses a threat to our national security. The case for bolstering faculty and curriculum resources devoted to the Mus-

lim Middle East is, of course, obvious from an educational perspective. The

region is vast. Islam represents one of the world's great religions and provides

not only an intellectual feast for comparative study in the social sciences and

humanities but also an indispensable comparison and contrast for more familiar

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