Do you belong to a language or does language belong to you? Do you wield the words you speak as useful tools or are you somehow beholden to your expressive capabilities and limitations? Gustavo Pérez Firmat’s evocation of the immigrant reality suggests language’s power over us. He places it as particularly potent in the context of Latino experience in the United States. With this in mind, it is unsurprising that Junot Díaz included Pérez Firmat’s words as the epigraph for his book Drown. As a speaker of Spanish and English, I have often felt limited in conversations where I can only use one language. It is as if I’m constrained and unable to take full advantage of my expressive resources. Pérez Firmat’s words indicate a deeper problem: a person caught in a language that, for cultural and experiential reasons, does not feel like one’s own. His is the story of the Cuban immigrant who grew up in Miami within a family that hoped to return to life on their island. They saw their time in the US as temporary until eventually it became their life. It is the story of living in a place where you feel that you do not belong, but being unable to return to your home; a home that not only is no longer yours, but -in many senses- has also ceased to exist. This is a reality of living in between and this contradiction of pertaining but not belonging is common for the immigrant. It is easier to understand in the geographic sense, but Pérez Firmat’s words invite us to consider the issue from a deeper, more personal, and figurative perspective. Language is culture and it at once provides the power to express who we are while also giving contour to our identity.
Pérez Firmat is one of the country’s leading voices on these subjects and here you can see him in conversation with another: Richard Blanco.
Pérez Firmat is one of the country’s leading voices on these subjects and here you can see him in conversation with another: Richard Blanco.
