Blog Post #2: Code Switching and Bilingualism

Code Switching and Bilingualism

Over the weekend I was at Tarleton State University, Stephenville for a conference organized by College Teachers of English. My first presentation at this conference was a very pleasant experience. Perhaps because of the size of the conference or because most of the presenters were from universities and colleges in Texas there was a nice homey feel to it. It was also interesting to learn what people were teaching and researching at their home institutions. Check out the CCTE website for description of the conference:
http://www.drw.utexas.edu/CCTE/conference-stephenville-2011/

My presentation was a joint one with Dr. Rich Rice titled "From Texas to the World: Geographical and Cultural Navigations through Life-Writing." Rather than talk about my presentation, I'm going to focus on another joint presentation in the same session which we got to hear titled: “The Melding of Two Cultures and Two Languages Through Code-Switching Through Creative Literary Exchange” by Sandra E. Garrett, Texas A&M International University, and Sergio D. Garza, Texas A&M International University. 

Both presenters were enthusiastic about the work they do with "code-switching" which is a term used for switching between two languages or between two versions of the same language. Many of their students at Texas A&M at the Loredo campus are bilingual. Some of their students are also first generation diasporic people who use both Spanish and English in their daily communication. Of course many students use Spanish at home and English at formal institutions of learning such as school or university. Sergio and Sandra had brought with them examples of creative writing by children in school and students who are now in college. In their short stories and poems many of these students talk about their experiences of living between two cultures.

One of the poems read out by the presenters titled "Tamarindo" was by a middle school student who compares belonging to a mixed culture to the experience of eating a tamarind candy: sweet, sour, and tangy. The poem refers to a particular candy named Tamy-pop available at most Mexican grocery stores:

http://sweetlittlemexico.com/catalog/images/tamy-pop.jpg

Very helpfully, the presenters had got along a big bag of the candy and offered samples to the audience. 
Besides being a very enthusiastic and enjoyable presentation, it got me thinking of how this kind of work relates to the South Asian diaspora. I also found a new metaphor for describing a bicultural experience: a little bit like eating a sweet-sour candy.

Blog post #1: Reading Shani Mootoo

I think its pretty cool that we're all blogging about our experiences. What's not so cool is that I thought I would be blogging from Austin about a conference that I was supposed to be attending. I would have shared my multicultural literature course syllabus (that y'all are studying this semester) at the conference. I was also looking forward to some ideas from other conference participants that I could use to teach you more effectively. But thanks to the fickle weather my flight and the conference both got cancelled.

So here I am with a 500-word blogpost to write. I can't write about my American experience (even though American culture is very different from South Asian culture) because I've been in this country for so long that it doesn't appear different or culturally alien to me. So, let's see, what do I blog about?

One of my favorite stories in the collection Storywallah is titled "Out on Main Street" by Caribbean-Canadian author Shani Mootoo. The author was born in the Caribbean Island of Trinidad and her ancestors are originally indentured labor from India. So, Mootoo is probably third or fourth generation of the Indo-Caribbean diaspora. She is also part of another diaspora since, like many Caribbeans, she moved to Canada a few years ago. In Canada she expresses her Indian and lesbian identity by going to a sweet shop run by Indians (the equivalent of a bakery and restaurant) with her girlfriend to sample some traditional Indian sweet snacks like jalebi etc. However, as a fourth-generation Indian diasporic person from the Caribbean, Mootoo does not know the traditional Indian words for the sweet snacks on sale in the shop. This is what the diaspora does: some connection with the original language is maintained but quite a bit is lost. So she is embarrassed at the linguistic confusion but also by the behavior of her other girlfriend and other lesbian friends who enter the shop. This explains the title of the story "Out on Main Street." Its a funny, touching, and very well written story and even though we're not discussing it in class, I highly recommend you read it.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, I heard Shani Mootoo, the author of the story, read from her novel at a conference I attended at the University of Antwerp, Belgium in 2000.

My First Posting

Thanks to Maddy I now have my own blogspace!! Keep checking it for my future postings.