The “Greedy” English Language

by Nicole 2 Comments

For this week’s class I read Vanessa Valdes’ article “there is no incongruence here: Hispanic Notes in the Works of Ntozake Shange,” in which she argues that Shange uses the Spanish language and Hispanic imagery to promote a more inclusive picture of the African Diaspora. Valdes believes that Shange challenges her audience’s idea of the diaspora and pushes for a “more ample definition of blackness,” (Valdes, 133). This essay resonated with a discussion I had in another class where we spoke about the “weight” that the English language holds in literature and poetry (Valdes, 132). In this class we are reading Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s Americanah, in which she italicizes the words in her novel that are not in English. I feel that when an artist writes in English but italicizes words from different languages it automatically others that language and the people who speak it. The very act of italicizing a word makes the letters look foreign compared to everything else. Of course it makes sense to let the reader know that a certain word is not English and therefore may need to be translated, but it makes English seem like the only acceptable language. As English speaking people we often expect and assume that books will be translated into English or written in English, and that any foreign word will be made clear and glossed for our convenience. In my other seminar my professor described the English language and English speaking people as greedy, which I think is somewhat fitting. As English speaking people (especially if it is your first language) we as a whole refuse to be made to feel foreign by the presence of other languages in our texts. I think it is unique and highly intelligent how Shange not only uses Spanish in her poetry, but also never feels the need to qualify the language with italics. Shange places English and Spanish on the same level by refusing to differentiate between the two languages. Valdes explains that “Shange’s readers should be able to read and understand both languages and acknowledge the viability of both, for both narrate the black experience in the Americas,” (Valdes, 132).

Comments ( 2 )

  1. Kim Hall
    Nicole, thanks for bringing Vanessa Valdes' important work into the discussion. I think your comparison w/Adichie would be more legible to the group if you had mentioned specifically Valdes' point that Shange refuses to differentiate Spanish (it seems she wants to make English look 'foreign'). Perhaps also you can bring this discussion back to a specific moment in fcg--even in the dedication to "my dearest mami & papi."
  2. Tiana Reid
    Does Shange really put English and Spanish on the same level? I'd like to hear more examples about how exactly so in your reading. What does it mean that Shange is considered a poet who writes predominantly in English? Or that there is more weight on English than Spanish? Still, Shange's use of Spanish is not entirely about the dismissal of English as a language of violence and colonization, she's also very much a student (of both languages). Where does language learning figure in to her poetics? And perhaps even as a mode of displacement or defamiliarization?

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