This time: two stories that touch on multilingualism, one more melancholy and one more forward-thinking.
Junot Díaz writes about being a No Sabo kid in “When your mother tongue is your worst tongue.” Lots of memorable details around learning, and failing to learn, different language varieties.
“No sabo kids” is a common trope around heritage Spanish users who are not as fluent as they or their friends and family might like. “No sabo” is the way someone might try to say “I don’t know” in Spanish if they understood the regular pattern for Spanish verb conjugation but they didn’t know that the verb saber is irregular. Most Spanish users would say “No sé” instead. Saying “no sabo kid” is a way to make fun of someone who knows some Spanish but not enough.)
It’s notable to me that this essay appears on his Substack. I approach Díaz as someone who loved Drown, didn’t like Oscar Wao, didn’t finish This is How You Lose Her, wasn’t sure what to think of “The Silence,” and was ultimately persuaded by my former colleague Maia Gil’Adi that his work is worth critically engaging, even if just to examine why he has such a central place in American letters. I’m glad this new essay exists. I’m also kind of happy it’s not in the New Yorker.
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Last month, the Māori Queen visited the British royal family in London.
A post shared by The Prince and Princess of Wales (@princeandprincessofwales)
When I first saw this post of Prince William with Queen Te Arikinui Kuini Nga wai hono i te po, I was a bit surprised to see the two monarchs being so friendly, and to see the British Royal Family spelling her name with such care. There’s a long history of British disrespect toward Māori land, language, and people. Even if the Queen hadn’t majored in Māori in college, she would be well aware.
At the same time, she was there to highlight economic futures more than sad histories. As her team posted in advance, the aim was to “celebrate rangatahi [young] entrepreneurs supported by the King’s Trust Aotearoa New Zealand.” Paging Monica Heller, Alexandre Duchêne, Susan Gal, and others on “pride and profit.”
Yes, monarchs are going to monarch, but I think there’s more going on. It’s interesting that her content emphasizes the young entrepreneurs who won grants (pride + profit), whereas his focuses on culture and history alone (pride). She’s focusing on the future, on technology, on small businesses; he’s focused the past. Her approach also reminds me of Cindy Tekobbe’s great book Indigenous Voices in Digital Spaces.
Needless to say, the comment section on Prince William’s post is a dumpster fire. An Indigenous person can be as capitalist and royalist as possible, and it’s still never enough.
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What I’m reading: Amity Gaige’s Heartwood for fun. A lot of James Tollefson for an article I’m working on. Today, his 1986 article “Language policy and the radical left in the Philippines: The New People’s Army and its antecedents.”