Culture

By Keone Hon

Today I had an interesting discussion with a couple of the researchers in my workplace about culture. Several of them have small children (actually, pretty much all the people here are in their thirties, probably because the methodologies we focus on are fairly new) and are trying to figure out how to teach their children their culture and language when their families and others who share their culture are far away.

The matter got me thinking about my own upbringing, as well as about how I can pass on my family’s traditions, along with the knowledge I’ve gained over the years, to my own children.

My family background is multicultural My mom is Mexican, and my dad is Chinese. Since my mom doesn’t know Chinese, and my dad doesn’t know either Spanish or Chinese, you can probably guess which language I spoke growing up: English! It’s always been a great regret of mine that I didn’t learn Spanish growing up, because I have never been able to attain fluency. I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise, since there’s a big gap between high school Spanish and conversational fluency. But it’s always been disappointing, because our language is a big part of our culture. The way we say hello to each other, the way we tell stories, our intonation when we make a joke or tease each other—these are just a few examples of how our cultural essence is transmitted through Spanish; but confidence in the language is a prerequisite to any of this.

So a part of my life has always been trying to learn about my culture and its language. Fortunately, many of my hobbies coincide with opportunities to learn.

For instance, I’m interested in cooking. I’m not a good cook, per se, but I can (usually!) follow a recipe and I get really excited about cooking because it’s a lot of fun. I was one of those kids who enjoyed playing with his food and cooking is arguably just that. So it’s been a lot of fun learning my grandma’s special recipes for tamales, beans, and the like.

I also really enjoy listening to music. To my friends’ discomfort, I like singing along to whatever I’m listening to (the discomfort is because I’m not a good singer) and I’ve found that I’m often most productive when I’m singing along to an old favorite. That’s not to say that productivity is everything, but what I mean is that music makes me happy, energetic, and focused. So when a friend introduced me to some música Latina a couple of years ago, I got hooked. I like pretty much anything sung in Spanish; I guess there are some rap exceptions, but as a general rule of thumb Latin music is awesome in my book. Actually, as I write this I’m listening to some Hombres G, but I’m also a big fan of Sin Bandera, Alex Ubago, and a few others…

I think I’ve gone a bit off-topic, but in closing, I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve had to learn more about my culture, and optimistic that there will be many more. For instance, I’d like to live in Latin America sometime in the next few years; I’ve actually only been out of the country once (and it was Australia! and I was four!) and think that would be a much better way to learn than karaokeing Ricardo Arjona songs over my homework.

I’m also really grateful for the welcoming spirit of Latinos, who have embraced me as familia despite only being half-familia, like an awkward step-brother or something.