ON ACCENTS AT CCNY AND THE PUERTO RICAN PLENA

Recent experiences with how I sound when I speak English -including seeing facial gestures that were not pleasant to look at or the person turning to another one to ask for explanations regarding what I had said, not even asking me- led me to notes on courses I taught on Spanish and learning to read and write; bilingualism, culture and curricula, and diaries I kept on my experiences with students at CCNY. My students at the College were mostly Latino students, and once in a while, African-American students. My Latino students never had an issue with my accent, be the Spanish accented English one or the Puerto Rican one in Spanish. Sometimes, they would ask for an explanation, but never made a face that seemed uncomfortable. With the African-American students I do not recall any unpleasant situations. I guess this latter group has developed a “consciousness” on languages as a result with their own personal experiences with dialectical differences brought about by history and slavery; and so many of them living in NYC communities where Latinos also live, neighbors facing similar daily life experiences. As I written before, that was not the case with a white dean and a white professor, and the last group of middle class white students I had to teach in the School of Education. With these two "intellectuals", I decided to stop speaking with them. With the students I forced them to face the issue; and it was a horrible experience. One of them, a gay out of the closet one, even wrote a letter to the dean, complaining about me and how shallow I was. Really, had he read what I had read or had the same community activism, artsy, educational and professional experiences I had had, then he could have complained. But prior to been a student at CCNY, he was a fashionista with a B.A in "costura". My position: I am a Puerto Rican, a colonial -and not an immigrant who might believe he or she needs to please White America- and such history informs how I relate with the rest of the nation. “Y al que no le gusta el caldo, se le dan dos tazas”; since “Mamá llegó el obispo, llegó el obispo de Roma”, and the bishop and its academia are shaken by the “temporal, temporal, qué será de mi Borinquen cuando llegue el temporal.” Since this a poem in prose, the plenas are metaphors.