When I was in college, knee-deep into my Chicano Studies, rocking the Mexican peasant top, reading Victor Villaseñor’s Rain of Gold like it was the gospel and carrying around my life in a tattered serape purse, I created a painting that pretty much summed up my feelings about not being able to speak Spanish. Sadly, I no longer have the image, but let me paint the picture for you. A young schoolgirl in pigtails sits on the floor, her legs criss-cross applesauce. She looks innocent enough, until you look closer to discover her eyes are downcast, and she doesn’t have a mouth. She holds a bright red tongue, which has been severed by a pair of scissors. The juxtaposition was both simple and symbolic: the mother tongue had been cut off from this young girl. She was me.
