Summary Of Bilingue By Espaillat

Finding a secure state of mind being bilingual can be one of the hardest personal battles to go through, and even harder if forced to express yourself in a certain way. Author Rhina Espaillat obtains the hardship in a poem, “Bilingual/Bilingue” of having to speak a language you involuntarily want to. This piece runs through the struggle and benefits of being bilingual with a strict parents, expressing the feelings from both the daughter’s and dad’s side. The poem displays many emotions producing how one can overcome such a battle and finally find that secure state. Espaillat use of symbols, dictions and similes, she presents the concept that forcing one’s lifestyle onto another person can victimize them to lead to self-loathe. Throughout the

At the start of the poem her dad makes it very clear that he only want one language coming out of his daughter. The poem gives a personification displaying progress in the daughter’s feelings and her hope, when her “tongue (mi lengua) learned to run” (line 13), and she finally realized she doesn't have to express herself the way her dad wants her to. She recognizes that being bilingual isn’t a bad thing even after all the times her dad told her different, he only was “half in fear of words he loved but wanted not to hear” (line 18/19). In the quote, when it says “fear of words he loved” this symbolizes he put up a guard of his own all because of the fear of being bilingual and betraying his culture; and losing his native language. When you have no control what you can say, it feels like a burden you wanna let free but can’t let out. She can always write in secret, which his daughter learned to appreciate more knowing her English letters created a barrier of her own. Finally when her dad observed she needed that other side of her to be herself, he let go of the rules and “still his heart was one” (line 14). His heart is a symbol of his true feelings and the body himself is the barrier created that won’t let his real feelings come out. Until her dad officially allows English inside, her only