A Quote by Sonia Sotomayor
An alcoholic father, poverty, my own juvenile diabetes, the limited English my parents spoke - although my mother has become completely bilingual since. All these things intrude on what most people think of as happiness.
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When I'm writing poetry, 99.9% of my writing begins in English. I spent most of my life in English, although I am bilingual.
My father was the son of immigrants, and he grew up bilingual, but English is what my father taught me and what he spoke to me. America's strength is not our diversity; it is our ability to unite around common principles even when we come from different backgrounds.
My father was raised by a violent alcoholic. There was alcoholism in my mother's family. I'm half-adopted, and my birth father was a drug addict and alcoholic. So, I think they very consciously made decisions and parented me in a way that was aimed to help save me from that. So, I knew it would be particularly painful and it was, especially for my father.
I didn't have parents, so I lived in people's homes... And because I grew up with no parental role models, I learned to become my own friend, eventually my own father and my own mother.
My nephew has type 1 diabetes, and it's my goal and hope that in his lifetime there will be a cure for diabetes. There's no place better to give the money to than the Juvenile Diabetes Association.
My father was a world-class scientist and my mother was a prolific painter. I could see that my parents had completely different ways of knowing and understanding the world, and relating to it. My father approached things through scientific inquiry and exploration, while my mother experienced things through her emotions and senses.
When I spoke with psychoanalysts, they confirmed to me that the most neurotic relationship is always between mother and daughter. The cliché is to think it's because of the father, the absence of the father.
My parents have always had a very limited command of English. Of course, when we first arrived in the UK, none of us spoke English, but it's much easier for a child to pick up languages. But the problem was not a lack of English; the problem was poor communication in any language. Remember, my parents came from rural Bangladesh with little education. It was alarming for them, I'm sure, to watch their boy very quickly exhaust whatever ability they had to teach the child something.
My father was English. He date-raped my mother so she's hated English men ever since. You know my boyfriend's English, and I'm, uh, I'm half-English, which she's never been real happy about. If she finds out I'm dating someone English, she'll ah, think I' turning my back on her and becoming a foreigner.' Cathy, that's the stupidest reason I've ever heard.
My first language is both English and Spanish. My mom was raised in Los Angeles, so with her we spoke English, but my father was born in Cuba, so with him we spoke Spanish.
The situation was kind of complicated in that my mother didn't speak Spanish. My father spoke English, you know, as best he could.
My English was limited to vacationing and not really engaging with Americans. I knew 'shopping' and 'eating' English - I could say 'blue sweater,' 'creme brulee,' and 'Caesar salad,' - so I came here thinking I spoke English.
I don't have kids, but I've often noticed when people first become parents they seem to completely forget their own adolescence and they start to, as their kids become teenagers, try to do the things that didn't stop them themselves. And I jokingly frame this as: Your brain gets wiped of those memories when you become a parent.
I have 5 children of my own. They are bilingual, like most second and third generations. But they speak primarily in English and they couldn't find anything on television that represented who they are in this country.
Both my parents had heart problems: my mother had type 2 diabetes, and my father had a stroke.
I have a funny relationship to language. When I came to California when I was three I spoke Urdu fluently and I didn't speak a word of English. Within a few months I lost all my Urdu and spoke only English and then I learned Urdu all over again when I was nine. Urdu is my first language but it's not as good as my English and it's sort of become my third language. English is my best language but was the second language I learned.
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