[ Music ]
[ Appplause ]
>> My beautiful family decided to surprise me, so my mother is here and she's never seen me perform before.
[ Applause ]
So is my uncle, my sister and my cousin.
[ Speaking in Spanish ]
>> [ Male voice ] That's what I thought. [ Applause ]
>> I told her this place is home for me, this place is sacred, and for her to be here
is having all of my family under one roof. [ Scattered applause ]
It is something I have dreamt of for a long time because when there is a language barrier,
you don't know how to explain something that you do for like a Latino culture, like for
many other cultures art isn't viable, and we don't understand what it is until we see
it and experience it and... yeah, this is something that I have been waiting for for a long time.
[ Applause ]
I do most of my writing in English. Papi never like this speaking in Spanglish.
If you ever heard us sputtering in either language from across the room you would yell spit it out.
But sometimes at home, I'll put on my Spanish and it'll feel like I'm wearing my mother's wedding dress
but Mommy didn't marry in a church, Mommy didn't have a big pretty gown,
instead what she wore was a two-piece suit, married in an office somewhere, my sisters and I
were the witnesses and we ate at a [inaudible] before heading home.
This is Spanish for me, everything that should be, but quite isn't, it's like coming home,
but all the furniture is different. Then there's English and everything is painted in its color.
Think of that gray that settles in and around dusk, that is English. Sometimes I get lost in it and then
the shape of words, what they feel and look like when I go to reach for one, I somehow mess it all up.
I laughed, turned bright in the face I blamed the Spanish, it came first, it is home.
Papi would drink, and after drinking he would talk. He often chose English
with a brown, crumpled bag [inaudible], [inaudible] Espanol, Papi.
But he would refuse. It was usually a lecture, you see formal things in my home only came
in English but whenever he was happy, he would call me to him [ Speaking in Spanish ]
and I would go. Papi was papi or apa or abuelo sometimes even papa,
but never father. I save that for the poems about his drinking, about my angry hurt,
about how far away it pushed me, I don't write about that in Spanish. Things are too real in
that language so I keep it for love songs. For my boys who have no idea what I'm saying
but they think it sounds beautiful, right? I say things like [ Speaking in Spanish ]
my fingers and my hair, and the head on my lap and of talking and
talking and saying all those pretty things, my mother used to pour over me when I was still
small enough to be held. So, that's what I'm saying is that Spanish is a feeling, a squeeze,
an ache, a corner of myself, I can't seem to quite get to, an English word isn't so much of
a feeling but an action, a dance that I know all the steps too, but still feel awkward dancing.
[ Speaking in Spanish ]
I am always wearing one language at a time and I will spend the rest of my life trying to
learn about everything I lost, we lost in translation. I love you, Mama.
[ Music ]