Episode 2: The Latinx Generation

Ari Martinez, an English teacher, discusses her experiences growing up as a young English learner in a diverse family. She talks about the impact of various cultures, including Mexican culture, on her upbringing. Ari shares stories of childhood challenges and barriers faced as an adult. She emphasizes the importance of learning English in a positive way and becoming an educator to help other children avoid negative experiences. We have no weapons. We only have pots and pans. We have no power. We only have pots and pans. Beat the pots. Bang the pans. This is our revolution. Welcome to the Pots, Pans and Gritos podcast, a voice for the English learner. I'm your host, Nolan Shigley. In this episode, I sit down with one of my Salem High colleagues, English teacher Ari Martinez, and discuss the challenges and unique situations she encountered as a young English learner and now as a highly educated adult. Born in the United States, raised by parents from two different countries, and influenced by friends from a Mexican community, Ari describes the impact various cultures had upon her youth. She shares difficult stories of childhood and barriers faced in adulthood. As you will hear, Ari cares deeply about the present and future of the Latinx generation as she dives deep into this topic. Along with our interview, you will experience the sound of Biorritmo, a salsa band from my hometown, Richmond, Virginia. Their pulsing rhythm and energy capture the spirit and heritage of Puerto Rico. Thanks to their permission, you will hear extended portions from Biorritmo's album, Puerta del Sur. As always, our mission is to create an archive of meaningful accounts while sharing artists with similar experiences and cultural backgrounds. And now, here are their stories. You can tell a lot about a person based upon their bumper stickers. You have a water bottle, a large water bottle, to keep hydrated. And I noticed you have the same sense of humor as me. And I noticed you have the same sense of humor as me. And I noticed you have the same sense of humor as me. And I noticed you have the same sense of humor as me. And I noticed you have the same sense of humor as me, which I'm very thankful for. You have stickers covering that name. But there's one particular sticker that really caught my eye, and that was Bob's Burgers. Adi, what's your favorite Bob's Burgers episode? They're all great, but my favorite is the one where Bob, they're coming out of, I guess, the restaurant depot, and Bob's brilliant idea is to teach Tina, his teenage daughter, how to drive in this empty, again, empty parking lot with the exception of one car. That's it. So he thinks it's safe. But Tina always manages to make a ride out of the simplest situation, and she crashes into the one car that's in that parking lot, and it so happens to be Bob's nemesis, Jimmy Pesto. I had a similar situation when I was trying to learn stick as a young 16-year-old. What's your favorite? I'm going to go with Art Crawl. Art Crawl, and I can't really explain why on this platform. Yep. Ari Martinez, please introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Ari Martinez, but my full name is Arianne. I just go by Ari1 because it's easier, and it's also been stuck for a few years already. I'm from Miami, Florida, originally, and I was there almost more than half of my life, and then a little bit in California and a little bit in Columbia, so I've been all over the place. So you come from a very diverse family, and we were talking about this yesterday. A father and a mother from different countries, and you grew up in even a more separate culture in California. Can you describe some of these various cultures that surrounded you as an early English learner? Yeah. Both of my parents are immigrants. My dad is from Guanabacoa, Cuba, and my mother is from a small town called Pugala Grande, Colombia, which is near Cali, but she grew up in Cali. And while living in California, I didn't really learn too much about either of those. It was mainly the Mexican culture, so mostly everything that we ate was Mexican. Most of my friends were Mexican, and, yeah, that's what I was surrounded up until we moved back to Miami. So your mother was from Cali. Yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong. This is the birthplace of salsa? Yes. And your father is from Cuba? Yes. And so there had to have been, like, amazing music constantly. I hope that's not too much of a stereotype. No, it's not. Both of my parents, Cuba is also known for their salsa dancing, and my dad, growing up, had, like, the best music. He had a lot of vinyls. The one that stands out the most to me is Miami Sound Machine. Oh, my God. Now, speaking of stereotypes, right? Yeah. And Cubanson is the name of the salsa of Cuba, sí? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay, can you expand a little bit? You said this Mexican culture in California. Where in California were you? We moved a lot, so it was always between Los Angeles and Sacramento, but mostly East L.A. was where we lived a lot, yeah, for the most part. We always lived in what was called, like, barrios, so it was, like, a bunch of apartments, and they had their own little neighborhood, and I think that's the best part of living in those small urban neighborhoods is because everyone knew each other, and all the kids would play out in the area, like, in the open area, and these places had what was called, like, the candy lady, and even in Miami, you would have, like, the candy lady. Yeah, yeah. And in California, you would have a bunch of Mexican candy, just, like, this lady out in her front door, just in the entrance, just selling a bunch of sweets and salty treats, and, you know, it was fun just getting those coins, picking them up out of the floor and carrying it over to the candy lady to see what we could get. So did your friends, your childhood friends, did they know that you were Colombian and Cuban, or did they think of you as possibly Mexican? I think they just saw me as one of them. That's pretty much it. I think they just saw us as, you speak Spanish, your family speaks Spanish, and that's it. I was just one of them. I don't remember us asking whether we, you know, what country are you from and what country your family's from. It's just, hey, hi, you want to play? Sure. Yeah. So did you adopt or adapt to any of the, I guess, various aspects of the Mexican culture more than your Cuban and Colombian culture? Yeah, I think before we went to, I mean, before I went to Miami, the only one I knew was the Mexican culture, the food, the festivities, the way they celebrated, the way they partied, the music. It was just all Mexican culture. Talk about, and you've mentioned this before with me, about maybe the EL program when you were young and growing up in, I guess, the early years of EL and the challenges you faced as an English learner. Yeah, so I remember up to, like, I know I went to kindergarten and stuff like that, but I remember first and second grade, I was in a class with kids who just spoke Spanish because I understood them. The teachers spoke Spanish. They were Mexican teachers, and everything we learned was in Spanish, everything. And just to clarify, Spanish was your first language? Yes. Yes? Okay. Yes. Even though you were born in the United States? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, because my dad was a big, his big thing was you need to learn Spanish, and the house rule was you only speak Spanish in the house. That's it. And if he heard you speak English, it was not a good deal. Do you remember the consecuenza for that? Yeah. I'm trying to understand. Oh, okay. Never mind. Bad question. It's okay. I think the outcome of that is that me and my sisters don't speak Spanish to each other. Really? Yeah, we don't. We just find it weird. We don't like speaking Spanish to each other. But in California, first and second grade, I was in this Spanish class. Everyone spoke Spanish there. All the kids were Hispanic or Latino. And then when I went to third grade, I remember that was like my worst year ever in school just because I had that teacher that bullied me for not knowing English. Really? Mm-hmm. Even though you were in a school that was predominantly Hispanic? Yes. And I remember so much that she, like, I remember her face. Every time I tell this story, it's the same thing. Curly hair, she was an Asian woman, and all she spoke was English. And she would always point at me and yell at me for not knowing the language. I'm so sorry about that. And you think about the adults in your life that you should be able to trust. Yes. And God forbid you can't trust a teacher that you spend how many hours a day with, right? Yep. And I couldn't tell my parents because my dad was always out working and my mom didn't know the language. And she didn't really want to start anything, so I just kept it to myself. And I tried, I guess I would hide in the library and just read, just try to read as much as I could so that I could, so she would stop making fun of me. Did this occur with other students as well? Not that I remember. And so after that horrific experience with your teacher in third grade, even later in life, how did you manage to even entertain the idea of becoming an educator yourself? Well, I didn't want other kids to go through something like that, kids like me. Just because I know what it's like to live in an immigrant home. Like there's some parents that don't want their kids to learn the home language just because they don't want them to go through something like that. But I think even though my dad was pretty strict with us learning Spanish, I think it is an important part of our culture and to learn it, and also it's a benefit. But also it's kind of like a double-edged sword. You get this to happen to you, where you get teachers who are people who just don't understand you and they think that you're dumb for not knowing the main language, you know, English, and I just didn't want other kids to go through that. And I learned English and I learned how to read. I became gifted in English. English was my best, you know, subject in school, and I just wanted other kids to experience something good from learning English, not something bad. You became an English teacher. An English teacher, yes. The irony of this story is you became this amazing English teacher. You're bilingual. You're so incredibly educated. And this story kind of reminds me of Maria Victoria, who was on our last show. And she talked about this difficulty of this language barrier serving not just only as a barrier in terms of understanding, but this barrier between her and her teachers, and her teachers possibly thinking that, well, she doesn't understand. Doesn't understand my English, but also can't understand the material, when in reality we're finding out that Maria is absolutely brilliant taking AP classes on her way to college. Did it become increasingly difficult as you got older to identify with a certain culture? Because when you left California for Miami, I'm assuming you left many of your friends who are from Mexico. Your father is Cuban, your mother is Colombian, and here you are. I guess you would define yourself as Latinx. Yes. We just finished reading House on Mango Street. Our protagonist, Esperanza, has a similar story to you, where her mother and father are Mexican, but she's born in the United States. And so she kind of goes through an identity crisis. And I wonder if you were going through something similar yourself. It's difficult just to, because in the beginning I didn't know what it meant to be Cuban or Colombian. I just knew what was the culture around me, which was Mexican. And then once we got to Miami, it was just full-on Cuban culture. Very little Colombian, up until we met my mother's family, and then we learned a little bit more what it meant to be Colombian, and the foods, and the different, like they have things in Christmas called the Noena, which is when they sing for Christmas, they pray, do little scriptures, sing, and they give food. And I didn't know any of that up until we got to Miami when we met my mother's family. And it's just like, I always go back to Gloria Anzaldúa and her book Borderlands La Frontera. You're in this border of all these different cultures, and you don't know where you're at, because you're not good enough for this one, and you're not good enough for this one, and you're not good enough for this one, and you're like, so what am I? Where do I stand? And you're trying to figure out, and lately what I've noticed, or what I've seen is a lot of talk about how the children of immigrants have created their own culture, just finding these connections or these similarities between our cultures and creating our own community just so that we have something in common with someone. Because we don't have that community too much with our own cultures, so we have to create our own. Like our home cultures, we don't seem to have a connection with them because to them we're foreign. This theme of being Latinx, identity, being a totally new generation of Latinos who don't necessarily know their home. And I don't mean necessarily their home culture, but their geographic home of their parents. And we talk about maybe the future generation will have it much easier than you have it. Yeah, because now they'll have that, I guess that Spanglish community. They'll know it and they'll understand it and they'll be able to share with other kids like them and people like them and understand where they come from, how they grew up. Because my daughter, she's always showing me TikToks about things like that. And they can already see it. There's a connection. Even if your background is from Nicaragua or even if your background is from Guatemala, there's a similarity between them that they've created now that they don't necessarily need those separate cultures because they've created, one's already been created for them where they can see that similarity within themselves. So have you visited either Cuba or Colombia? I have visited Colombia a bunch of times. Me and my sister, before my other sisters were born because there's five of us, lived there for a year and we've always visited there. I haven't been able to visit Cuba just because before we had that whole thing where Americans weren't able to visit. And then afterwards my grandmother died so there wasn't really a reason for me to go, I guess. Was she your remaining relative in Cuba? Yeah. I guess it's like a great aunt but I don't know anything about her. I'm guessing by what you just said you have family in Colombia though. Yes. I have a lot. They're a big family. Because my dad, he only had one brother and I know one of his sons and he doesn't live in Cuba anymore. He lives in Paraguay and we talk on and off and I learned a lot from my dad about him. But yeah, in Colombia I have my grandmother. My grandfather passed a few years ago and my husband's also from Colombia so there's reasons to also visit there. Yeah, absolutely. My brother-in-law is from Colombia so I think we're basically setting a future trip up. Okay. So what has been your experience with EL students now as a teacher? Because we talked about this the other day how you miss some of your EL students that you kind of helped along. Yeah, in my first year of teaching I had two transition classes which was like kids that were either Level 3, Level 4 ELs and I had a few that were like Level 2. And it was just amazing like teaching with them and talking to them and creating that connection and a lot of them were amazed. They're like, oh, you speak Spanish? I was like, yeah, I speak Spanish. I was like, that's good. And you're teaching? I was like, yes, I teach English. But even though it was great we still had like an issue with, again, speaking our home language. That connection within the class just because it was considered an English class. We weren't like we got it or I got it. We all got in a little bit of trouble for speaking Spanish in the classroom. Really? Yeah. Was it like a resource class? No, it was an English class but it was specifically and it was mixed with kids that weren't EL students and in the class we had an ESL teacher. So she did not like the fact that she could not understand what we were saying and she got upset with us and told us that we weren't allowed to speak English in the classroom. I mean, not English, Spanish in the classroom because she told me that I was deterring their English and she told them that this was an English class and we shouldn't be speaking Spanish. The only time I really find myself speaking more Spanish is in my Level 1 class. And truthfully, I shouldn't be speaking as much Spanish as I do. Right. But it also makes a very strong cultural connection between us. They know they can trust me and I can communicate instructions better. Yeah, I think that was the issue. The biggest issue is that she wasn't able to create that connection because as soon as they would walk into the class, she would say, you're mine. Yeah, and not let me around them. Even though I would teach the class in English, I would explain things to them in English and if I found that it was still too difficult for them to understand, I would go to Spanish because the most important thing to me was that they understood what was being said. Speaking of being an English teacher, let's stir the pot just a little bit. Not that we haven't already. Not that you didn't just stir the pot. But do you feel there's a double standard for a Latina teaching English versus Latina teaching Spanish? Do you feel there's a double standard for a Latina teaching English? There's a double standard for a Latina teaching English versus, let's say, an American teaching Spanish because throughout my high school career, throughout my time at the University of Nebraska, almost all of my Spanish teachers were exclusively white Americans. I believe I had one Latina at the university. What was your experience? You took Spanish classes in high school or college? Or Spanish literature? I took Spanish classes. I didn't take Spanish classes. I took French class in high school. But in college, my English teachers were all white. The majority of, at least in graduate level classes, the majority of the kids were white. I think there was one other student there that was of another race, and then it was me. When we would get to the Latin American part, which was really great that my professor would do that. I love that professor. It would always be kind of like me talking, which was great, but it just felt like there was no one else that could talk about that. So you representing all Latin America. But the double standard, is there one for you being Latina teaching English versus an American teaching Spanish? I didn't think there would be, but it seems that there is just with some of the things that I've gone through. I've had students tell me, shouldn't you be teaching a Spanish class? Why are you here teaching English? I've had people not like me being an English teacher, or the first thing that people would tell you when you tell them what your major is, they're like, oh, you're learning English? But your English is so good. It's just automatic that I'm learning the language or that I just got here and I'm just learning it. It's not, I guess, common to be a Latina learning, your major being English. I'm guessing if it's somewhere like in California, maybe it's more common where they have more Latinx literature because we don't, in the university that I studied at, we didn't have that. It was just a little section in the American culture and it was only like one or two authors and then that was it. Yeah, don't get me started on the works that we teach in English classes. Yeah, I think it's just that when you think about American literature, English literature, you don't think of anything else but like old white dudes. Old white dudes. Tell me about it. That's it. And now, I mean, yeah, back in the day, yes, those were our only writers. Then we had women writers, white women writing, and then we eventually got African American writers to be more mainstream. I mean, we had the Harlem Renaissance and all those writers coming up. And now it's even more difficult to include other cultures for some reason in the canon, including Asian, anything outside, or Latinos even, to be included into canon. And I don't know why they're not included as like even American literature. I mean, we are part of America. Absolutely. So how will you raise your child differently than your own childhood? And we were speaking about future generations of Latinx because now your child is that future generation. Yeah. I've tried to back off a little bit with the whole having to speak Spanish in the house. I do want them to learn Spanish. My daughter started taking Spanish classes in middle school. She stopped. Her Spanish, she understands it. Her speaking is, I guess, what they would call an Osago kid, which I hate that word. I hate it. But, I mean, it's good enough for her to get through to people, especially speak to her grandparents. And my son, I am really trying to eventually get him to learn to speak Spanish just because he has autism. So speaking is enough for him. I don't care if it's English or Spanish, but he was nonverbal for a while. And that was a hard decision to do just because I did want him to learn that Spanish. And now it's difficult for him to communicate with his grandparents. I can see that frustration with him and them trying to communicate. Like he doesn't like speaking to them because he's like, I don't understand them, I don't understand them. And he gets upset because he doesn't understand them. He's asked me before, he's like, why don't I speak Spanish? I was like, I don't know how to tell them. And he sees the need, I guess, of being able to communicate with his grandparents. And I'm glad that he sees that need, and I'm hoping that eventually he'll learn it and he'll be happy. Because right now he's just frustrated. And my daughter, who knows how to speak it, it's funny, she doesn't communicate with her grandparents as much. But, again, I'm trying to break that need to, like our parents would always do, like pass us the phone to people that we really didn't want to speak to, just force us to speak to them. And that's something I'm trying to break, too. But I do want her to learn our culture, both of them, our Cuban culture and our Colombian culture. And she's learning and she loves it, especially the festivities. Beautiful. So which aspects of your culture do you bring in to your family? Just the stuff that we do, especially during Christmas, birthdays, things that we do for birthdays, like smashing the cake on them. We did her quinceanera, which a lot of kids aren't doing that now just because they would prefer to take trips. But we did the quinceanera, the dress, the photo shoot, her doing something for the guests that came in, she sang for them. So that was a lot of fun to do. And even my son was like, do I get a quinceanera? I was like, well, if you want one, I'll give you one. If you want it. Arie, you shared a strange tale with me the other day about your father emigrating from the island of Cuba. I would be remiss if I did not ask you to share. So I don't know a lot of my dad's side of the family, and I got to know one of my cousins. My dad only has one brother. And I was telling him all the stories that my dad would tell us, and I told him how he said that he came here on a plane. And he started laughing, and he's like, you know that's not true. I was like, what do you mean? What do you mean it's not true? He's like, no, that's not true at all. I was like, do you want me to tell you? I was like, yeah. And he's like, well, my dad said that their mom was gone visiting family members up like somewhere in the countryside. And he had already planned to leave. He had been asking to go, and his mom didn't want him to go. So he decided it would be a good idea that while she was gone, he would take her refrigerator because it so happens that his brother, older brother, was looking for a refrigerator. And he decided that he was going to take that refrigerator, his mother's refrigerator, and sell it to his brother. Well, he sold it to him, and he took that money and gave it to the person that was planning out like this whole raft boat thing to come to Miami, and he was gone the next day. And when the mom came back, she had no refrigerator. He was gone. Selling a refrigerator is strange enough. But to sell it to your brother who shares the same mother, correct? Yes. Did you ever? Yeah. I have no words for that. That story, thank you so much. You're welcome. [♪ music playing ♪ Date cuenta. So Ari, what is the future going to be like for you? Am I going to find you in an EL classroom someday? Yeah, I think so. I think EL is probably my next step. And then I really want to get my Ph.D. in Latinx literature. And I'm hoping, crossing my fingers, that after I do that, I want to bring a Latinx literature to an English department in college because I think it's important. I mean, the Latino culture is growing. And I think there's a need for us to learn more, not just Latinos to learn about, you know, the things that we write, but also others to learn about, you know, one of the biggest cultures growing here in the United States. I mean, we are a part of the American culture more than ever. And, you know, with the growing numbers of Latin kids, I mean, I think it's important for them to continue to learn, you know, what their culture will look like or is looking like here in the United States, especially through literature. As we record our first episodes, I continue to be humbled by these conversations. The Cuban refrigerator, a mother emigrating from her home in Colombia, and the life journey of Ari Martinez, a colleague and friend of mine. Thank you, Ari, for sharing your success story of becoming an English teacher after evolving as an English learner. Thank you, Biorritmo, for being the soundtrack of this week's episode. And thank you, listeners, for joining us on this episode of Pots, Pans and Gritos. But most of all, thank you for being an ally to English learners everywhere. © transcript Emily Beynon