2022 Poetry Winner: "Your mother never taught you Spanish" by Thailyea (Thai) Lopez

Photo Credit: Volodymyr Hryshchenko, obtained and licensed through Unsplash.

Your mother never taught you Spanish

The Spanish that hummed in my home was like white noise,
It was everywhere but it had no meaning.
It was on television, the radio,
And it prospered in the mouths of the adults in my life.

Your mother never taught you Spanish
Not a question, but a phrase I commonly heard from the
Twin tongued women of my neighborhood.

Little do they know my seeds are rooted in
The music, the food and the history.
My name is from a telenovela.

The phrase Your mother never taught you Spanish
Is an insult, that loosely translates to
You’re not Latin enough.

They are saying that my parents,
With names laced in the language,
Did not have the sense to teach me the culture I always knew.

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Thai Lopez is a Latina from New York City, who grew up in a bilingual household she was never actually taught Spanish thus sparking the idea for Your Mother Taught You Spanish. Not knowing the language has always made Thai feel like she wasn’t Latina enough. Since she started college, Thai has started to explore the Puerto Rican culture as well as other identities that she claims.