Diary of a ‘No Sabo Kid’
When I was a little girl, I remember playing with other kids in the jungle gyms or play areas at places like fast food restaurants and amusement centers. Sometimes, those other little kids would start speaking to me in Spanish. I would freeze and shake my head nervously to make it seem like I understood. Similar experiences like that one would follow me in my youth.
The term "no sabo kid," comes from the incorrect conjugation, a common mistake for those learning Spanish, for the verb "saber" by saying “no sabo,” instead of “no sé,” for the phrase “I don’t know.” It refers to someone of Hispanic heritage that does not speak Spanish fluently.
As a third-generation immigrant, not being fluent in Spanish was a huge insecurity of mine when I was younger. I know I am not the only one who has experienced this. According to Pew Research Center, fewer than a quarter of third-generation Latines speak Spanish.
But why? For me, the answer is a mix of generational trauma and linguistics — something, again, that is a shared experience amongst Latines.
The story I have always heard is that when my grandfather immigrated to San Francisco from Peru in the 60s, before English as second language classes (ESL), he was put in classes for people with disabilities simply because he did not speak English. Because of this experience and other experiences with forced assimilation, his kids needed to learn English first. Of course, they still spoke Spanish at home, but this made my mom and my aunts receptive bilinguals or passive speakers, someone who has native fluency in one language and can understand but not speak a second language.
My dad is receptively bilingual as well. He always told me stories about growing up and how he would always respond to his parents, immigrants from Puerto Rico, in English while still understanding what they were saying in Spanish. As a matter of fact, my grandpa went back to Puerto Rico for a year and took my dad and my aunt with him. My dad had to repeat the third grade in Puerto Rico because he did not speak Spanish as much as he needed to.
Growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood, going to predominantly white schools and being in predominantly white spaces, I had an internal tug-of-war and identity crisis as a young girl. While I heard "You don't count, Olivia" when one of my peers would talk about the Latine community, I would also be ostracized for listening to reggaetón instead of country music or having large family parties at my house. I remembering being mortified when my neighborhood friends would laugh and talk about how they could hear my grandma sitting on our screened-in porch and talking on the phone loudly with our family members back in Peru.
On the other hand, I was seen as white-washed by the small number of my Latine peers and was even more so othered because I was a Peruvian-Puerto Rican living in a state where 54% of Latines identify as Mexican, followed by 19% who identify as Central American, with ancestry from countries like El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. In middle school, I started to resent where I lived and compared it to where I was born. Surely, there were others like me in this gray area over in diverse California. "Why in the world, of all places, did we move to Sanford?" I would ask my mom.
It wasn't until high school that I began to grasp my identity. I joined NC SLI, now LatinxEd, an initiative co-founded by two UNC Professors – Paul Cuadros and Peter Kaufman. Housed in UNC-CH’s Center for Global Initiatives, this scholarship and mentorship program created learning experiences for me to embrace my cultural identity, become an innovative problem-solver and critically conscious of communities and their needs. I even made LatinxEd’s inaugural 20 Under 20 List in 2018 for my vision, voice and valor as a Latine student.
Today, I have worked my way up to a B2 level in Spanish as a heritage learner. By listening to music, watching shows and conversing with my grandma, I have been able to reclaim my Latinidad through language. While it still makes me feel more comfortable to respond in English, I know that it doesn't make me any less Latine. I am glad conversations about how detrimental it is to gate-keep the identity based on the language are coming to the forefront, especially as more experiences about forced assimilation are shared and there is a growing awareness that multiple languages are spoken in Latin America, not just Spanish. I know I have a responsibility to keep the culture alive, and my experiences have reminded me that assimilation does not equal erasure.
