she-learns:

 I grew up hating the language I spoke, my parents spoke, and my relatives spoke. I wished I didn’t speak that way. I wished  I wasn’t born in that place so my native tongue wouldn’t be what it was. No one in the TV spoke the way we spoke. Never. Books never had anything written in my language except for that one sentence in the grammar book where they classified our language as a dialect. My language was undesired and obnoxious. I began to replace everyday words with the prestige language because I wanted to be like the people on the TV- educated and better cultured. When I went to my cousin’s house in the village, I never used the words in my native tongue. I felt proud. I was better. 

Eighteen years. I lived eighteen years hating the way I speak until I found out my native tongue will soon be lost in the pages of history. I soon learned to love my identity and my language. But it was too late, I guess. Now it’s 1 am in the morning and I’m over here crying with a word document open before me. I don’t know the words in my language. I had to listen to almost 20 songs until I found out how to say “star” and “game” in my native language that I should have known better than anything else. 

I grew up hating myself because the media acted like I didn’t exist or the few times they did acknowledge my existence, they presented me in such a way to make me feel as though I shouldn’t be proud of my identity. That it’s not cool to be me. Don’t ever tell me the monolingual domination in media is not a big deal. It is. It erases history. It suppresses diversity. It kills people’s sense of identity and pride.