Book Club: “Mr. Rosenblum Dreams In English” & Why I don’t speak Spanish

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This month’s From Left to Write book club pick is Natasha Solomons’ “Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English”.

I’ll admit that I’m a little behind on my reading, because, well, I’m kind of behind on everything but from what I’ve read so far, Mr. Rosenblum is the picture of assimilation.  Granted this story takes place in WWII-era Britain, but it sure is reminding me of someone I know and love…my mom.

I’ve talked about my mom aplenty here on the blog, but I never really got into her “backstory”…and I’m not going to get all biographical here in this post, but it’s important to point out that my mom came to the US as a teenager from Cuba.  The year was 1969, so if you know your history you would know that her family didn’t just “decide” to move, they fled.  Naturally, my mom only spoke Spanish and had to enroll immediately into an American high school (in Delaware, no less) while not speaking the language.

Nowadays there’s ESL programs and Spanish-speakers are ubiquitious, at least in my area, so it might not be as jarring to try to learn English as a second language, but it was for my mom.  People discriminated against her as soon as she opened her mouth (some still do), so she took her Spanish and shoved it aside.

Supposedly, my mom attempted to teach my brother (he’s the oldest) Spanish and he got very confused making his own Spanglish language.  As most of us probably know, this is pretty normal, all bilingual kids I know started out “behind” in both languages, but become fluent in both soon enough.  Instead, when  1970′s Delaware schools wanted to classify my brother, Mom decided to ixnay any and all Spanish for my sister and me (who would come much later, ahem)

If we ever expressed any interest in speaking Spanish my mom would squash it, like if my young self tried to put together a sentence en espanol, Mom would look at me with disgust and say “I have no idea what you’re saying.”  If I explained that I was trying to say “perro” for “dog” she’d roll her eyes and say “perrrrro!” correctly and remind me that I didn’t say it all right, so why bother?

It sounds harsh, but it’s common for someone who has gone through the experiences she has.  She has no love at all for Cuba, not a lot of recipes from home, not a lot to tie her to a culture.  Instead, speaking Spanish has dealt her only prejudice, so why would she want to pass that on to her children?  I can understand it, and I can honestly say that I don’t really resent it at all.

Disclosure:  I was sent a copy of this book for review purposes.