APRIL 2014
76
“It’s so stupid that you speak Russian with your dad when you live in America.” The words still ring in my mind from time to time, even years after I had originally heard them. These words stung. They came out of nowhere, spoken to me by a friend during playtime in elementary school. In high school, I would later hear a variation of these words.
The first time I heard them was the worst. That was the first time I became insecure about my culture, and who I was. Since I was born, my father only spoke to me in Russian, and taught me to read and write in Russian as well. It wasn’t that he didn’t know English, he did and still edits my school papers, it was that he wanted me to know my roots and be able to communicate with my family. “Normal” dinner conversations at my house were carried out in two languages. “Normal” parent-teacher conferences consisted of me explaining my work twice, once in English, and the second time in Russian. Nothing ever seemed strange about it until my friends would comment on the way I switched between languages, or had to read for a certain amount of time in Russian and English before I could play. Some thought that it was strange and made faces, while others treated me as an extraterrestrial monkey, feeding me phrases to translate into Russian.
Then, I was told those words. It was the first time someone had outright said what he or she were thinking. So I began to resent the language, feeling that the Russian made me less American. I felt that knowing this language was causing me a loss of approval from my peers. I retaliated, refusing to read, or write. I spoke very little, and tried to answer my father’s questions in as few words as possible. At that time, my nanny that was pivotal in my Russian education moved away. I began to decrease in my progress of the language. It wasn’t until I saw my brother and sister’s Russian doing the same thing years later. Since they had learned even less Russian than I had due to their age, they were barely able to communicate with my dad. That was my turning point. I realized that this language, the culture, and the customs that came with it did not make me less American; they made me even more so. I saw the advantages of being bilingual. It opens up career opportunities, made learning Spanish a lot easier, and has helped develop my brain. It has also given me a piece of my family’s culture. I began to teach my brother and sister what I knew, all the while reading and writing myself in order to learn too.
The people in my life now may not always understand every sentence at my family’s dinner table, or that I have to switch the keyboard on my phone to text my dad in Russian, but they accept that it is my reality. Some of my friends have even picked up some words and phrases! Now I know that speaking to my dad in Russian isn’t stupid, even though I know he can speak perfect English. You don’t have to understand someone’s situation to accept and celebrate who they are. A person defines themselves through so many different forms, and culture is one of them. Those words will never affect me as much as someone embracing what my culture is. Speaking two languages and embracing my culture does not equal stupid, and it never will.
TWO
STUPID
by Arielle Kimbarovsky