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me (& other students) at some random ceremony in elementary school in miami

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screenshot showing tuluá, colombia on a map 

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me with my abuelo & abuela & family probably at downtown disney/somewhere in orlando in 2005ish 

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I was born and grew up in Miami-Dade County (Homestead / Hialeah). I'm Colombian on my Mom's side and Irish/Italian white on my Dad's. Both sides of my family are poor/working-class. Both of my parents speak spanish; my dad speaks english and my mom understands some english. I am first-generation American on my mom's side, but my dad's family has been settled in "America" since the early 1900s.

Growing up, I spoke both Spanish and English, but since my mom's family does not speak English, I spoke mostly Spanish before I went to school. I spent very early elementary in Miami public schools and the rest of my schooling in rural central Pennsylvania public schools.

My family lives in Colombia and the US and I have some family from El Salvador as well, so my Spanish was never really consistent in my opinion. When I moved to rural PA, I only spoke Spanish at home and at church (lol) until I stopped going. My Spanish fell off when I stopped speaking it in social settings and only spoke it to talk to my family, especially since I would speak Spanish in a casual and non-formal context. Speaking mostly English as a teenager in rural PA definitely influenced how I speak both English and Spanish, as well as my relationship with both languages.

I definitely still consider myself bilingual and don't subscribe to any idea that language needs to be "perfect" (typically upheld to a colonial standard, especially when it comes to spanish and english). I will never forget or stop communicating in spanish even if my education/schooling is in english because I both literally need it to communicate with my family and it is important to my cultural identity.

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my father and his younger sister circa 1979 with my grandmother 

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My dad grew up in Baltimore with a single-mother of Irish-Italian heritage. His mom grew up with a bit of Italian from her grandparents, but grew up working class in Baltimore speaking English.

My dad learned French and Spanish before dropping out of school and moving to Miami for work, where he met my mom. My dad definitely has an American accent when he speaks Spanish, but he has spoken it for ~30 years and he is fluent. He speaks to me in both Spanish and English, but mostly English since it's his first language and his side of the family only speaks English.

I lived with dad's mom (pictured) for 8 years; she only speaks english so I spoke only english to her and at school while speaking spanish to my mom's family. This has definitely impacted my relationship with language, as she would get frustrated when I was speaking spanish and she couldn't understand me, so I internalized a lot of shame as a child around language.

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my mom, uncles, and aunt in colombia ~80s

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My mom grew up in Valle del Cauca, Colombia, specifically in Tuluá, and her family has lived in/around Tuluá, Riofrio, and Cali for multiple generations. She and my two uncles migrated to Miami in the late 90s and since then my abuelo and some other relatives have migrates to Miami. My family speaks Spanish and has for multiple generations. My mom learned some english when she moved to the US, but spoke only spanish to me and would occasionally speak to my dad's family in english. My parents communicated exclusively in Spanish. It is incredibly important to both me and my mom's family that I speak and understand Spanish and am able to communicate with them.

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map showing miami to york county pennsylvania (where i moved to as a kid) 

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I moved to York County, PA in the middle of elementary school. Going to a rural school where people only spoke english, the educational environment was undoubtedly set up for assimilation to english. Since I grew up bilingual, I assimilated to my school environment and had no other choice. Moving from a multilingual environment to a monolingual environment was traumatizing in several ways I don't want to get into, but I remember feeling frustrated and as if I lacked agency/free will (which I did because I was a child).

Language is not neutral, so I know my english accent is typical of someone from Pennsylvania and my friends from high school since I lived the majority of my life in south central Pennsylvania. I definitely speak more like my dad than my mom, but growing up in multiple places makes it difficult to piece together how the way I speak came to be. It does make me mourn for how my relationship to language could be different today and I think spending so long in a rural area and english-only schools damaged my relationship to language.