By Andrea Wilson
For those of you who do not know me, my name is Andrea Wilson. I am from Los Angeles, CA, and was raised in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles. Growing up, I never intended on being bilingual. Even though I heard Spanish frequently in my neighborhood, I never desired to become bilingual. In fact, unlike most of my peers in college and high school, I never traveled outside of the United States. With that being said, how did I become bilingual?
I studied Spanish in high school. In addition to studying Spanish in high school, I studied Spanish in college and continued until I completed Spanish 4. However, Despite having teachers from America, Colombia, Spain, And Basque Country, I was never able to become fluent in Spanish. At this point, my goal was not fluency, but rather to take a class I knew I could receive an A in. Spanish was always an easier subject for me than other subjects in school. Most importantly, I became literate in Spanish well before I became fluent in speech.
In my last year of college, I made the decision to move to Puerto Rico to finish my undergraduate degree. My main desire was to obtain my undergraduate degree, from La Universidad de Sagrado Corazón. Experiencing another's culture, gave me perspective by providing me context behind the language. This is not context, a person could read from a book, or context a person can gain during a vacation stay on a resort. This context is shared and comes from people within a culture who spend time with non-native speakers like myself. For the first time, I had a community with a culture, outside of my own, that accepted me and I accepted the culture. What made this experience particularly special, was the capability for me to see myself in the Puerto Rican culture despite not being Puerto Rican. There is no other culture I would have wanted to learn from than a culture of people who taught me that my black skin was connected to their ancestral roots.
Sometimes, there is a temptation for people to visit a country while remaining disconnected from the culture. However, this becomes difficult to do when a person uproots their life to live in another culture. Once this occurs, learning the language becomes second nature. What country would you live in if you had the opportunity to experience a culture apart from your own?
I am a Black American non-native Spanish speaker who learned Spanish once I boldly chose to live in Puerto Rico. Years later, I still have the language they taught me.