“I have been accused of being a bully. I think a lot of that stems from precisely my resistance to feel like I need to do the emotional labor of making people feel comfortable about what I’m saying. In particular, as a Latino scholar doing work in bilingual education, I’m particularly resistant to the idea that I need to make white people feel comfortable doing work in bilingual education. I put my work out there. I let it speak for itself. I certainly have never targeted anyone individually and personally insulted them, which is what bullying actually is, right?”
“This whole idea of a bilingual brain is still, from my opinion, coming from a monolingual perspective in the sense that most of the world is bi- or multilingual. Why are we exceptionalizing the, quote, “bilingual” brain instead of the quote, “monolingual” brain to begin with? Why aren’t we saying, “What are the unique cognitive traits of monolingual people who are the minority of the population?”
Maybe a bilingual brain is just a brain and it’s the monolingual brain that’s actually this weird thing that we need to study. Of course, I don’t actually believe that, but I feel like some of the discourse exceptionalizing bilingualism, when we reverse it and really think about, well, if we describe monolingualism in that way, that would be really strange. Yet, “bilingual” describes more of the world’s population than “monolingual.” What exactly are we doing there?”
“On growing up internationally - from the Daughter of Copper.
And so, with the greatest of ease, both as children and adults, we float back and forth between our two languages and cultures, seamlessly navigating the moments of time and place that define us.”
Source: Daughter of Copper, A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Identity, Growing up on Borrowed Land
“Earlier this year, a self-identified White, monolingual English-speaking teacher explained to me that, among other signs of her stupidity, Dr Baez’s English language skills are ‘horrible, and from what I hear, her Spanish isn’t that good either’...If Dr Baez, the bilingual school principal with multiple university degrees, including a doctorate in education, was subjected to such discriminatory thinking, then what could this mean for students, who were positioned in highly subordinate institutional positions?”
Source: Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad
“Being bilingual in English and Spanish language was useful during the Florida hurricane Ian disaster.”
“But you have to be somewhere I can find.
You understand?
Somewhere I can find.
I nod, because I know what he is saying
and what he is not saying.
He can't find me if I'm not here.
(p. 113 of the hardcover edition.)”
Source: Iveliz Explains It All
“If you simply copy and paste instant translations, you only end up with meaningless and contextless junk, which has no relation to the culture and the people.”
Source: World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets
“Better to have no translation, than to have a translation without soul.”
Source: World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets
“Even after speaking six languages, I say, the supreme language is love.”
Source: Visvavictor: Kanima Akiyor Kainat
“Öncelikle ben insan,
iyilik benim iman;
mundo mi monasterio,
annihilation my azan.”
Source: Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat