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by Selwyn Chu

My grandmother has a certain look in her eyes when something is troubling her: she stares off in a random direction with a wistful, slightly bemused expression on her face, as if she sees something the rest of us can’t see, knows something that we don’t know. It is in these moments, and these moments alone, that she seems distant from us, like a quiet observer watching from afar, her body present but her mind and heart in a place only she can visit. She never says it, but I know, and deep inside, I think they do as well. She wants to be a part of our world. She wants us to be a part of hers. But we don’t belong. Not anymore. Not my brothers—I don’t think they ever did. Maybe I did—once, a long time ago, but I can’t remember anymore. I love my grandmother. She knows that. I know she does, even if I’m never able to convey it adequately to her in words.

The scene is always the same: the three of us sitting in a room together, talking. I see her from the corner of my eye, glancing for only a second or two, but always long enough to notice the look on her face, the expression I’ve become so painfully familiar with over the years. I am forced to turn away; the conversation resumes. She is a few feet from us. She hears everything, and understands nothing except what she can gather from the expressions on our faces, the tone of our voices. She pretends not to be bothered, smiling at us and interjecting random questions or comments in Chinese—a language I was raised to speak, a language I’ve slowly forgotten over the years, a language that is now mine only by blood. It is an earnest but usually futile attempt to break through the invisible barrier that separates her from us, and in spite of all her efforts to hide it, that sad, contemplating gaze inevitably surfaces. I always know what she’s feeling—exclusion, isolation, rejection, shame—but I never know how to change that, and I feel guilty. I am guilty.

Minorities in America have a special intimacy with those emotions, an intimacy gained through years of practice and experience with some of the darker aspects of this nation’s past. That America has a history of intolerance toward other ethnic groups is no secret. Two hundred years of racial injustice have left an indelible mark on its cultural landscape. The many immigrants who have come here over the past half-century are living examples, having had to face numerous hardships—poverty, racial discrimination, cultural barriers—since their arrival. Time has brought about varying degrees of social change, but for us first and second-generation Americans, there has risen a critical, and perhaps unexpected, burden that we must carry—the preservation of our own cultural heritage. As the immediate descendents of those who made the transition to this country, we are in a unique position. Having been raised here, this new generation has been able to embrace American culture in its entirety. That acceptance, however, has brought about a gradual but steady erosion of ethnic values, which have become natural casualties of assimilation. A growing divide with earlier generations has begun to permeate individual families. The cultural legacy to be passed down to future generations has become more difficult to preserve as we become more and more Americanized. The problem will be ours to ponder, and ultimately, ours to resolve.

In her essay “Silent Dancing,” Judith Ortiz Cofer offers the perspective of a first-generation immigrant forced to confront the complexities of a bicultural upbringing. A native of Puerto Rico, Cofer, along with her family, moved to Paterson,New Jersey, in 1955. “Silent Dancing” recalls some of her early experiences living in an impoverished tenement amongst Paterson’s large Puerto Rican community. The setting provides a general idea of the adversity faced by newly arrived immigrants in the United States at the time, as Puerto Ricans, in particular, were met with widespread racial prejudice and discrimination. The intense resistance encountered by Cofer’s father in his initial search for an apartment was quite typical then of the prevailing attitude toward a minority group that was arriving in such large numbers. In the midst of a rapidly growing population in the States throughout the 1950s, Puerto Ricans were subjected to an array of harsh stereotypes, being increasingly portrayed as welfare leeches, drug addicts, and juvenile delinquents (“History”). This prevalence of poverty and racial hostility serves as the backdrop for the early experiences of Cofer and many other minorities of her generation. These struggles are compounded by a diminishing cultural heritage in a hostile environment where assimilation is not an option but a means of survival. That immigrants should, to a certain extent, adopt and integrate themselves into American culture is a realistic expectation. But done in a milieu in which a people are victimized for who they are—their ethnicity, cultural values, and beliefs—it is an act of coercion, not free will. For those who came to this country as adults, the assimilation process is unlikely to come at the expense of cultural awareness; their values and beliefs are well-established, and they are able to view American culture in the context of their own. For their American-born or raised children, however, the distinctions are not as easy to discern.

Cofer, in her essay, evokes a lot of memories with fondness, in spite of the solitude and destitution of her environment. Yet, there remains a lucid sense of the turmoil inherent in her situation, which takes form in the divergent attitudes of her parents toward the barrio. She describes her father’s desire to leave the barrio as an “obsession,” and he accordingly did not allow the family to form any bonds with the place or the people who lived there (147). But for her mother, who had never completely gotten over leaving her homeland, the overwhelmingly Puerto Rican atmosphere of the barrio was a comfort. This clash is, in many ways, a microcosm of the uncertain predicament facing a younger generation of Americans exposed to two different cultures. The barrio symbolizes everything the Cofers left behind in Puerto Rico—its people, customs, and way of life. It is a haven from the unfamiliar—and often unwelcoming—world beyond the neighborhood. Leaving the barrio would represent the abandonment of a significant part of themselves and their heritage. Like Cofer’s father, most of us left our “barrio” a long time ago; the little we took with us has slowly diminished over time.

Throughout “Silent Dancing,” Cofer intersperses various scenes from a home movie recorded years ago at a New Year’s Eve party at her uncle’s house. After a sweep of the living room, the video shifts its focus to three women sitting on the couch: Cofer’s mother, her eighteen-year old cousin, and her brother’s girlfriend. Each represents a place on the cultural spectrum: the girlfriend has just arrived from the island, which is apparent from her insecure body language; the cousin, who has grown up in Paterson, is completely Americanized; the mother lies somewhere in between the two. Cofer’s cousin “doesn’t have a trace of what Puerto Ricans call la mancha (literally the stain: the mark of a new immigrant—something about the posture, the voice, or the humble demeanor that makes it obvious to everyone the person has just arrived on the mainland)” (146-47). In a recurring dream, the cousin says, “I do what I want. This is not some primitive island I live on. Do they expect me to wear a black mantilla on my head and go to mass every day? Not me. I’m an American woman, and I will do as I please” (150). Cofer’s cousin embodies the fading cultural identity of later-generation Americans. Although her blatant disrespect for and rejection of, her Puerto Rican background make her a somewhat radical example, the sentiments she expresses share similar origins with the overall detachment of today’s minority youths in regard to their own culture. The cousin’s later troubles also suggest that there may be grave consequences to this separation. After getting pregnant by a married American man, and experiencing a failed abortion attempt that produced a dead fetus, she was ironically sent away to a small village in Puerto Rico—(“La Gringa*, [the men] call her…La Gringa is what she always wanted to be…”) (151).

In considering the plight of Cofer’s cousin, I am reminded of all the times my grandmother has teasingly said that I am an American who happened to be raised in a Chinese family. I always laughed at this comment, taking it as a light-hearted jab at my Americanized upbringing and thinking nothing more of it. But when I recall these moments now, the joviality of the exchange is strangely absent, replaced by a subtle melancholy, and I begin to suspect a deeper meaning behind her words. My grandmother still occasionally mentions this to me, laughing half-heartedly as if it’s an old joke between us that I still enjoy, but I can never manage anything more than a weak, uncomfortable smile. Jokes, I’ve learned, are a lot less funny when they begin to approach truth.

In her essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” Gloria Andalzúa portrays language as an integral part of one’s personal and cultural identity. She uses her own experience with Spanish to argue that language is an extension of a person’s individuality as well as an essential part of his or her culture. Her essay depicts a society unreceptive to such distinctions from other cultures. She asserts that “wild tongues can’t be tamed, they can only be cut out” (93). From Andalzúa’s past experiences—being punished for speaking Spanish at school, taking requisite speech classes in college to get rid of her accent—it would seem that America has often resorted to the latter.

American society, however, is not exclusively at fault. The current generation of minority youths also implicate themselves in the cultural struggle. Many, like Cofer’s cousin, have been more than willing to embrace American culture and put aside their own. Amy Tan confronts a similar dilemma in her essay “Mother Tongue,” in which she discusses the shame she felt because of her mother’s poor English. At first, she removed herself from her mother’s language and culture, speaking and writing in a way that she hoped would convey her “mastery over the English language” (607). It’s something I can empathize with. I’ve always made the same effort. A girl once told me I didn’t sound like a person who spoke Chinese. She pointed to my lack of an accent, and I took her remark as a compliment. I didn’t want an accent. I didn’t want to speak like my parents. What I wanted was to be seen as an American, as an equal in a country whose history and culture are so vastly different from those of my family’s. Tan ultimately discovers the value of her “mother tongue” and resolves to preserve it in her life as well as her work. The revelation had eluded me for much of my young life, and now I am left to wonder if it’s not too late to regain what I have lost.

At the conclusion of “Silent Dancing,” Cofer says of her dreams, “I […] have to hear the dead and the forgotten speak…Those who are still part of my life remain silent, going around and around in their dance. The others keep pressing their faces forward to say things about the past” (151). The voices of the past demand an audience. And as long as we listen, they will continue to speak; they will have power. They are the voices of our history, of our culture, of ourselves; they are our voices. How easily we have forgotten. I once heard them well, but now I have to strain to do so. More and more, I imagine a time will come when the voices grow weak, when their echoes fade, and in that moment, I will awake to a dark, empty silence. And the silence will be deafening.

* La Gringa: Derogatory epithet used to ridicule a Puerto Rican girl who wants to look like a blonde North American.

Works Cited

Andalzúa, Gloria. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” Encounters: Essays for Exploration and Inquiry. 2nd ed. Ed. Pat C. Hoy II and Robert DiYanni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000. 93-101.

Cofer, Judith Ortiz. “Silent Dancing.” Encounters: Essays for Exploration and Inquiry. 2nd ed. Ed. Pat C. Hoy II and Robert DiYanni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000. 145-51.

“History.” The Latino/a Education Network Service.14 Oct. 2002.<http://palante.org/02History.htm>.

Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue.” Encounters: Essays for Exploration and Inquiry. 2nd ed. Ed. Pat C. Hoy II and Robert DiYanni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000. 603-07.

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