海角大神

Far too often, there鈥檚 a stopping point for Latinos attempting to uncover family history. There are blank spots and questions not easily answered, spaces filled with wounds and lost stories. Quiara Alegr铆a Hudes embarks on a pilgrimage to discover more about her family鈥檚 roots in her memoir, 鈥淢y Broken Language.鈥�

Hudes rose to prominence as the book writer for the Tony-winning musical 鈥淚n the Heights鈥� and won a Pulitzer Prize for her play 鈥淲ater by the Spoonful.鈥� Her writing in these two shows highlights her precision, clarity, and candor. That same energy is found in 鈥淢y Broken Language,鈥� a raw and eloquent memoir that follows Hudes鈥� childhood in Philadelphia to her adulthood as an undergraduate at Yale and later to Brown University where she took playwriting workshops under the guidance of award-winning playwright Paula Vogel. Throughout, she describes making her way through life lessons communicated in English, Spanish, and Spanglish. 鈥淢y Broken Language鈥� is at once nuanced, loving, empowering, and melancholic.聽

The memoir opens with Hudes鈥� family 鈥� her mother is from Puerto Rico and her father鈥檚 background is Jewish 鈥� moving out of their multilingual West Philadelphia neighborhood to largely white, suburban Malvern, Pennsylvania. It was Hudes鈥� first realization that not all neighborhoods had residents who spoke multiple languages.聽

Once she arrives in Malvern, the children in school taunt her. 鈥淲hat are you?鈥� they want to know. 鈥溾�業鈥檓 half English, half Spanish,鈥� I ventured, as if made not of flesh and blood but language,鈥� Hudes writes. From an early age, Hudes grasps the ways that language reflects, distorts, and makes demands. The only Spanish she hears is spoken by her mother, never in her father鈥檚 presence, during forays to the hilltop near their home where her mother tells her about the spirit world. Despite the dislocation Hudes feels from being separated from Philly friends and her extended family, she is exhilarated by the chance to bond with her mother.聽

Readers feel the tension of Hudes鈥� adolescent and college years as she鈥檚 trying to figure out how to be; she doesn鈥檛 allow for easy binaries, nor does she attack who or what makes her question herself as she explores what it鈥檚 like to be a Latina girl, and later a Latina woman, in contemporary U.S. society.

For Hudes, language remains the main point of tension: 鈥淚 was a migrant in my own life,鈥� she writes. She feels inadequate on several fronts: She is neither Puerto Rican enough nor white enough and she doesn鈥檛 know enough about composer Stephen Sondheim.聽

She also inherits the matrilineal teachings of Santer铆a and the language attached to it, along with knotty, unresolved situations. At one point, she questions if her Spanish is strong enough to continue studying Santer铆a. The ceremonies call out to the spiritual world and are seen as a decolonization effort by many people in the diaspora, Puerto Rican and otherwise. Hudes supplements the information she acquired at home by reading books like 鈥淔our New World Yoruba Rituals.鈥澛�

Hudes intentionally resists tying together her experiences into neat narrative bows. 鈥淢y Broken Language鈥� prompts rethinking of the representation narrative, who it is designed for and who it liberates 鈥� if anyone 鈥� which will undoubtedly create roadblocks for some readers. Even though we exist in an increasingly globalized landscape, we鈥檙e still consumed by feel-good narratives of cross-cultural exchange. The success of Latino artists like Hudes can be considered an antidote to political and social oppression, but it doesn鈥檛 mean the trauma is gone or that she has found all the answers.聽

But there鈥檚 an undeniable catharsis in seeing such an excellent writer communicate what many Latinos struggle to express about language. It encourages a reevaluation of the relationship with language 鈥� no matter how fraught the inheritance. There is a brutal honesty that Hudes brings to Latina girls and women鈥檚 experiences, which is vital to understand as women strive to have their voices heard and believed. It鈥檚 the key to repairing the broken systems that have long defined the United States.

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