Why do I know little of myself?

The common theme I found in Marcus Doesn’t Speak Spanish by Pablo Cartaya and Grandfather’s Journey by Allen Say is the connection to family and exploration of the family. In Marcus Doesn’t Speak Spanish, the character, Marcus, is trying to find his identity by looking for his father. While searching for his father, he begins to meet most of his family members that his mother has never mentioned to him on their trip to Puerto Rico – though his focus through the time there is to meet his father. In Grandfather’s Journey, Say talks about his grandfather’s migration from Japan to the United States. After a while, his grandfather returned to the small village he lived in Japan and married his childhood sweetheart. Forward to Say being born, he talks about the war that destroyed his grandfather’s home and how his grandfather wanted to return to California. Say moves to California and starts his own family bought now understands why his grandfather missed his home. Say travels back and forth between Japan and California.

The story that Marcus Doesn’t Speak Spanish by Pablo Cartaya is typical to some children born in the United States to people who migrated here – they lose touch with their culture. Cartaya is able to explicitly articulate the feelings a fourteen-year-old may be going through when they were raised without their father. This happens with children born around the world; why did my father leave us? Language and dialect need to portray actual interactions between the characters, and the terminology should be accepted by contemporary standards (Temple, 2019). Cartaya is able to account for realistic interactions between the characters, Marcus does not understand certain interactions between his mother and his family in Puerto Rico. This is like what some of my students are accustomed to. I have spoken Spanish to some of my students, and they respond with, “I don’t know what you’re saying mister.” Cartaya makes his book authentic and real to the lives of migrant people or children of migrant parents. Cartaya has created an authentic story of typical experiences of children who are born in the United States, although Puerto Rico is a territory, and have not fully experienced their authentic culture and themselves.

The story in Grandfather’s Journey by Allen Say is typical to people who migrant from their home to another location. I constantly think about my mother’s and father’s migration here to the United States years ago – they miss their home country of Honduras. My mother was fortunate enough to go visit Honduras this year, but she no longer wants to move back because of my niece. This is true for a lot of people. They miss their home country but are unable to go back because of legal status issues – undocumented and in the United States is much more real than what is said. According to Temple (2019), “The cultural details necessary to make a story come alive should not imped the flow of the story. These details should be presented in context so that cumbersome explanations are not necessary” (Temple, 2019, P. 101). Say has his story flow smoothly just with the use of the photos. His pictures do not depict any stereotypes, but rather give real and authentic experience of Japanese culture and American culture. The images he uses when he returns to Japan depicts the small village that his grandfather grew up in.

It is important that our students get to experience their culture outside of what is know through their family traditions. Students must continue to want to travel to the cities, towns, villages, or countries that their parents are from to gain more real and authentic knowledge about themselves and their culture.