Comments on: Writing in One Language, Living in Another

By: May McLeod

May McLeod — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:44:37 +0000

John, I am glad of your response, and it helps clarify my awareness of what happened in my own family. Although I did my best to ‘play the game’ much of the time, there were actually many ways and many times I did ’speak up’ – verbally and in deed. I didn’t see it coming, but my own need to stand with ‘the things that happened’ – something to do with that rather old-fashioned ‘commodity’ called ‘the truth’ – actually cost me my family. I was not choosing to ‘lose’ them – it has been unbearably painful – but something in me just couldn’t keep swallowing and participating in the ‘cover stories’… This is not about being unable to consider different points of view – it’s about the way that the denial of violence is, in many ways, the most damaging aspect of traumatic events i.e. the denial that something really bad really happened – it leaves the victim profoundly isolated, and this is the thing which can be hardest to heal. (Vietnam vets, amongst others, have educated me about this – but the same stuff happens in ‘ordinary life’ too of course – inside of the place so many assume we are safe – “family”…)
For many years I couldn’t find the words to talk about some of the things that had happened. I had come to think that I would be forever locked in this prison of the ‘unspeakable’. Then I read what Paul Fussell had to say about WWI soldiers suffering “shell shock” post-war. He said that actually we have plenty of good words with which to tell the story, that the problem really is that nobody wants to listen. We tend to get the message that ‘nobody wants to know’ without words even being said – we’re very sensitive to such cues, it’s self-protection after all – we’re already hurting and don’t need the added pain of rejection and humiliation. Paul Fussell said that it’s really not a matter of there being no words for the ‘unspeakably’ terrible things some people suffer and witness, he said that ‘”unspeakable” really means “nasty”‘ – and suddenly I felt a fountain of hope welling up – I began to think that it wasn’t necessarily all my problem, and my ‘failure’ to ‘find the words’…
The power of language! But it is not just ‘being able to say’ it seems – it seems to matter that someone can hear. (See Jonathan Shay’s wonderful book ‘Achilles in Vietnam – Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character’ re a ‘trustworthy community of listeners’ and the willingness to be changed by what we hear…) The power of relationship…
Me raving! Part of my fear/excitement at taking up the challenge to speak in this strangely personal/impersonal arena. It just does matter so much – this thing of connecting with other human beings. Scary, and exciting… Talking to myself – talking to ‘you’ – a stranger…
I am glad you said what you did about the rebellion/submission stuff – in some mysterious way what you said has allowed me to accept myself much more – just through this little conversation. Maybe cos you accept yourself – and it’s contagious!
Anyway, thanks!

By: john guzlowski

john guzlowski — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:15:11 +0000

May, I like what you say at the end of your comment about finding new ways of re-expressing the self. I feel we are always, all of us, trying to find a way of doing that, using the language that we have and the language that we had, mixing them up in evolving ways.

Isn’t it always the trying to talk that keeps us talking?

One last thing, about my sister and her rebellion. She was the rebel, I was the passive, submissive one. She was 2 years older than I was. I think I learned from her that if one were to survive in the family I must submit. My sister wouldn’t.

By: May McLeod

May McLeod — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:14:32 +0000

Glad to have your responses, John and Sarah.
Reading back over, and thinking about ‘the words speaking us rather than us speaking the words’ and the ‘game’ that language is (‘illusory’, fantastical, or otherwise) I think about the relational context again and see how skilled I became at joining in with other people’s language-worlds even when I felt I didn’t ‘know what I was talking about’ and even when their ‘world’ was intimidatingly different from my own. Now, with the wisdom of age (!) I can look more compassionately upon this younger me who seemed, in some ways, to be ‘capitulating’ or ’submitting’ to these games of making shared worlds through language.
I think about your sister’s clear rebellion, John, and have wondered why I wasn’t more obvious in mine – I have felt ashamed of the way I have ‘gone along with things’ so many times, and not ’spoken up’… Now I think I see my own behavior more in terms of my deep need of and valuing of relationship and connection, and my willingness to find my way into the language of another even when it made me feel uncomfortable, for the sake of finding/making/maintainig relationship to some degree at least. I know of myself now that I would much rather be able to talk things through with someone, even when it feels dangerous and difficult, than ‘make war’ or ’slam the door’ as my parents used to do. I don’t mean this with any moral judgement attached – it’s just an observation about the way I seem to work. Sometimes it’s a good thing. Lots of times it’s got me into big trouble, and I’ve wished I were better able to ‘make war’, or simply walk away…
But yes – this net of language in the sea of relationship… I love that language can ‘talk about itself’, and that we can talk about ourselves to each other like this! I am somewhat technophobic (‘old fashioned’ – in lots of ways I prefer pen and paper) and don’t feel very ‘cosy’ with computer screen ‘interfaces’, but I sure do appreciate this strange new way of talking to people through the connections of this ‘world wide web’, even though, lots of the time, I hunger for languages other than words. It has felt like a big deal to me to enter in to this conversation – it feels so personal, yet is intimidatingly (to me) public, and I am so aware that I am always commiting ‘autobiography’ – even when I am not obviously talking about myself. Very ‘exposing’ – but this seems to be an excellent practice arena! A safely ‘distant’ yet also strangely intimate meeting ground… A place to try out different ‘voices’ – different tongues… To reshape the languages that have shaped us – our ‘mother tongues’. To think by speaking, and maybe to ‘grow up’ at last – inventing the world through the voices I ‘try on for size’ (like this one), not having to think that only one voice is ‘the real me’, nor that I must play it other people’s ways… Sometimes I wish I wasn’t such a slow learner – but surely better late than never! It helps having other people to play with!!

By: Sarah Luczaj

Sarah Luczaj — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:04:33 +0000

Hi May, and John,

thanks for sharing your personal angle on this, May… indeed, what “mother tongue” means to us is all about what “mother” means to us, and that is not always a comfortable home in which to be, indeed not all of us even know where that place is…

in my experience it has only been since I have been uprooted from my language by living in another place, that it has become so precious. Before it was often a place of conflict, contradiction and escape attempts, but once I was no longer in *that* place, I realised how the language had invisibly sustained me…all around.

But as Peter pointed out, languages are fluid, various, interconnecting, no longer “natural” monoliths in today’s world. And here we all are, sharing our stories.

By: john guzlowski

john guzlowski — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 11:18:31 +0000

Hi, May, I read your post about your mom and your language.

It reminds me of my mom and my sister. My mom needed to control everything my sister did. My sister responded by being more and more American. Part of this involved using only English and avoiding our mom’s Polish.

This just made the relationship more tense of course, and it was only resolved when my sister finally married and left home.

By: May McLeod

May McLeod — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:02:48 +0000

As I grew up I felt myself secretly inept at the game of language. I was painfully aware that there were lots of words I really didn’t know the meaning of – I did get general flavour, but felt shamefully uncertain of my understanding – I would just pretend I’d ‘got it’. Sure this is part of how we learn language, but I’m talking about something else here – it connects with the assumptions in the naming of “mother” tongue – associations of comfort and belonging.
My mother used to speak about everything as if she ‘knew it all’.
I am thinking about the ways we learn our ‘mother tongue’ – maybe mostly, and firstly, from our mothers. The assumption is that our mothers love us – thus the ‘belonging’ and ‘comfort’ of our ‘mother tongue’ as we learn to speak. It is a very different ‘game’, though, when the mother who transmits this language is also needing to continually assert her own dominance and power.
I so appreciate what John Guzlowski has said about the prejudice towards foreignness/otherness – the prejudice against his speaking of his own mother tongue of Polish in an English-speaking social context. Sometimes this prejudice against ‘otherness’ happens inside what is assumed to be the ’safety’ of ‘family’.
There are still many words which trigger an attack of ‘two plank brain’ (the short version of “As thick as two short planks”), even though I have repeatedly looked them up in the dictionary and tried to ‘remember’ what they mean. I seem to have a ‘mental block’ about some words, which I reckon has to do with the emotional messages that were part of the relational contexts in which these words were habitually used in my family. It was a game of exclusion, and I knew I was only pretending to understand…
Because my parents only liked intelligent, sensible, capable children I kept my stupidity to myself. It was about power, I think, and their needs, as profoundly ‘injured’ and ‘insecure’ persons who couldn’t bear to own such ‘weaknesses’ in themselves, and so were often brutally ‘contemptuous’ of any sign of such things in their children (amongst others). So my ‘mother tongue’ was a dangerous game – a mine field really – not just because I didn’t feel able to play it competently (I grew up thinking I had to have a degree before I could have an opinion), but because of the ‘forbidden’ things I really wanted to say, and sometimes did try to say, but then found things exploding in my face!
I took to writing to myself – the only form of conversation available. It was lonely – it didn’t feel like ‘belonging’, though there was some comfort in it.(It was in reading other people’s stories that I did find comfort and companionship – so YAY for language!) I still find it ‘dangerous’ to say what I really think, but have been doing more of it lately – life is short. Recently I have even begun to appreciate things about my ‘mother tongue’ – never used to like English much – all part of the ‘coming home’ to myself and my own history – through words.

By: Sarah Luczaj

Sarah Luczaj — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:51:50 +0000

Wow… l love the poem about your mother’s response, John. To me it says something about language as a way of naming and controlling the world – and the irrelevance of these activities next to violence, death, and other things which cannot be spoken…

By: john guzlowski

john guzlowski — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:04:46 +0000

I shared some of my writing about my parents with my mother. I was translating her stories into English and then translating her English into poetry (another language). She couldn’t read English and never took any interest in my writing until I had my poems translated into Polish.

At that point, she started reading my poems about her, and her immediate response was. “That’s not how it was.”

The various translations of her experience missed her experience, she felt!

You can see the poem that she responded to and a poem I wrote about her response to my poem at:

http://www.eiu.edu/~agora/Dec03/Guzall.htm

By: Sarah Luczaj

Sarah Luczaj — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:45:51 +0000

Reading along and absolutely fascinated by all the comments!

By: Mariana

Mariana — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:56:33 +0000

Beautiful article, Sarah. My mother tongue is Spanish and I have written some poems (long time ago) both in Spanish and English, but… I was never able to translate the Spanish poems into a “decent” English version I felt okay with and vice versa.

This means the poems I have written in one language have stayed in that language, because although I work as a translator, I still find it very difficult to find the most suitable words that would convey my views and express my feelings, accurately.

I do agree that our mother tongue holds some magic. In my case, I was born to a Spanish speaking family, but grew up in the United States, so at some point it’s been hard for me to feel or express myself in just one language :)