Summary Of To Live In Spanish An Immigrant Commentary By Trinidad Villegas

In the reading “To Live In Spanish: An Immigrant Commentary” by Trinidad Villegas, the subject of inequities in language is discussed. She explains her own account of dealing with intersecting identities. When immigrating to the U.S. she spoke only Spanish. This became a problem. She says, “All my classroom instruction was conducted in English by mostly white teachers, who had very little understanding of our live or our world”. (Villegas, pg.2) She states that she feels caught between two worlds. To answer the demand of the Latino parents and community for more assistance, administrators offered the “Migrant Education Program”. However, this program ended up being far from educational. This program was used more as a tactic for the administration to claim that they were promoting diversity and providing cultural programs. Villegas uses the term false generosity to explain this situation. The teachers were more interested in their teaching status than the learning

In the testimonial by Goreti, she explains her experiences of discussing undocumented immigrants in class and hiding the fact that she was one so students would not acquire racist beliefs about her. “ Racist perceptions are ideologically tied to the meaning of being an undocumented immigrant. “ (Huber, pg. 85) As described in the reading, the beliefs support the idea that immigrants contribute to social decay of the U.S. society. This type of intersection puts undocumented immigrants into a situation where they try to hide their identity instead of maintaining their cultural habits. “Acknowledging and understanding the complex intersections of race, immigration status, class and gender present in dominant constructions of Latino identity and in particular, a Latino undocumented immigrant identity, is an initial step towards deconstructing negative perceptions of this group.” (Huber, pg.