Their merging signals the end of translation, and the beginning of creation — both of perception and expression that do not exist in your native tongue, and of one’s own self.
This shows that it is believed by the author, learning a language can aid in shaping your world view.
Because in truth you too have become a child again in your adopted language. You and your second language grow together, through youthful exploration and awkward adolescence, into the heady freedom of adulthood. I believe that you are reborn in another tongue — in a language that was not given to you, but chosen, and earned
This conclusion shows that the author believes having and lor learning a second language at a young age is extremely healthy and also something that can help you see the world in a different light.
There are many pleasures in knowing another language — the warmth of a stranger’s face when you answer in her mother tongue, books as their authors wrote them, songs and films without liner notes and subtitles. But there’s also the joy of thinking and being in another language.
The author's primary theme is shown in this statement, as they truly desired to learn and even now desired to teach languages so others might get to explore the world in many different and unique ways.
I coveted those alien languages, their mysterious sounds and enigmatic words, and the difference that they presented to the world that I knew.
This elaborates on the fast that the author saw others as gifted or unique while they only saw themself as boring or plain.
As a child, I developed a strange, inchoate envy of kids who spoke other languages at home. I envied Carmina — who could speak Spanish with her parents, and Kareen — who spoke Creole at home. I envied Mischa, who knew French and German, and I envied my friends who trudged off every week to Hebrew school.
The author has easily discussed their distaste for only being able to speak in one language whilst others had many more to utilize.
I know this because I was raised with only one language — English.
This point is used to transition over to a vivid detail of how the author envied others who could speak more than one language.
I believe in foreign languages. I believe that in learning to speak languages other than our mother tongues, we find our better selves in the words and worlds of others.
The author believes that when overcoming the boundary of language, we can better ourselves.
I pour her a cup of coffee, but she won’t take off her coat. So that’s the beginning. Write about me.
This line expresses the significance of the author's grandmother and the original line of remembering and writing about them, now referring to the author instead of Rachel.
Now my blackness walks to school with me, to the edge of the university campus where I teach. We pause beneath Louisville’s seventy-foot monument to the Confederate dead and we both look up, into the glinting mustache of the bronze infantryman balanced on his granite pedestal.
The Blackness the author felt as their identity bled into other aspects of life support the main story, the idea of their roots taking hold and pulling them into a spot they'd be forced to fit.
With an African woman called Rachel and her wedding to William Henry, half-English, half-Cherokee
This line was the start of the true poem, the idea of who Rachel was and why she was so relevant to the author's identity
Ashes, oyster shells, my mid-Atlantic bones. My grandmama at twelve, walking away from the farm in Virginia, leaving the little Negro school that only went up to sixth grade.
This line expressed in exceptionally heavy detail the life that the grandmother went through, the way they looked, smelled, and felt.
I try to write about her. I try to write about her.
This line makes me believe that the author desired to write specifically about her, the woman who was loved with all the author's heart, and who was longed for in the way of validation, a way to move between two points of the story whilst striking hard on the points of what was truly desired.
It feels, to him, like a trick. As if I’ve drawn a silver coin from behind his ear. The poem changes when marked by my blackness, I learn.
The author's blackness terrified the professor from the sounds of this piece, a way to symbolize something which could attract a reader but what was it that they meant, the professor could be seen as shrewd or inquisitive.
I’m no master of order, of music, of blackness. But I’m learning to hum in millions of intimate keys. In my poems, I wish to share my blackness with the world, but it’s personal, too. When I write, my great-grandma, Alverta, enters the room with her sadness and her cat-eye glasses. Her name sounds like a hairpin bent back on itself. She tells me about the big-city dreams she failed to catch. I want to say that her voice resembles mine, but it doesn’t. Alverta is Alverta. I pour her a cup of coffee, but she won’t take off her coat. So that’s the beginning.
This part of the poem ended the entire passage, a conclusion explaining the author's feeling of sadness as they're grandmother was the one who inspired their love of poetry and they feel as though what they can muster is nothing if not sheer mimicry to hers.
I wish to put my blackness into some kind of order. My blackness, my builtness, my blackness, a bill. I want you to know how I feel it: cold key under the tongue. Mean fishhook of homesickness that catches my heart when I walk under southern pines. And how I recognized the watery warp of the floor in my great-grandma’s house, when I dreamed it. This is what her complaining ghost said: Write about me.
This part of the poem began the entire passage, a small introduction with my own personal take on it being that of the author being pulled from the heart strings to write a poem about their grandmother, a poem that held meaning of their past and the home they once knew.