Native Toungue

I didn’t grow up learning my native tongue.

Sure I went to chinese school, learned my colors and numbers.

I still remember how to say strawberry,

but i never learned the language.

The shame of it all marked my childhood.

The disapproving stares of relatives and the black cloud that hung over me as I walked through chinatown.

Elders would ask me questions,

I answered back with blank stares.

Being a third generation ABC (American Born Chinese) my parents had already forgotten their language,

and it turn forgot to teach me.

Choosing instead to conversate in proper english.

The pressure of Americanization hiding their toungues and trading them in for suave American English.

And it happens so gradually, how our toungues changes.

Reforming language, toungues twisting in different directions to a different repetition all in an attempt mask our ancestry.

No Accents FOB.

Sure europeans sound beautiful with a french or english accent,

Asians rid ours like SARS.

I sit here learning my language from a white man on a CD.

Relearning what has been spoken by my people for hundreds of years,

the words that have formed my tongue.

Auntie, cousins, uncles, next time I see you in China things will be different.

We will exchange stories,

and it will not be as you said so humorously,

It will not be a chicken trying to talk to a duck.

I will have come back with my true language on my tongue.