Lives in Two Languages: An Exploration of Identity and Culture by Linda Watkins-Goffman

About this Book

Have you ever felt like you could exchange identities with someone, disappear into the pages of a book and become the protagonist? Well, that is what it felt like when my students and I read the autobiographies, essays, and novels in Lives in Two Languages in my class of "Psychological and Social Background of the Bilingual Experience" at William Paterson University in New Jersey. The books by Richard Rodriguez, Eva Hoffman, Amy Tan, Chang-Rae Lee, and Julia Alvarez spoke so authentically of the experience of changing cultures and identities, of crossing boundaries that we all felt we could identify, whether we had moved to another country or another city in this country. The profound process of discovering another self in a new context was fascinating, and it even inspired us to tell our own stories in class. Furthermore, in this process were discovered underlying universal issues—such as public and private identity, gender, generation gap in communication, and work identity—that have far-reaching implications as to the choices we all make as we live our lives.

Researching for this book, I found that class and race were other factors related to identity so I added some other authors, like Zora Neale Hurston, who in her day spoke about issues of identity and race that are still considered controversial today. I added research from bilingual psychologists like Salman Akhtar, sociologists like Erving Goffman, and sociolinguists like John Schumann—all of whom offered other perspectives on how changing identity can have profound effects on the individual in every aspect of life, including education.

Lives in Two Languages concludes with a discussion about the American identity and explodes common misperceptions about immigrants as students.

Although for the purposes of the textbook we were only able to include select excerpts from the memoirs/novels, I require my students to read the works in their entirety. The more our students read on these issues, the more they will begin to understand about their own identities and those of others. With the changing face of today's classrooms, all teachers—regardless of the subject they teach—need to understand the role of culture in our lives, and the reading of autobiographies (and some novels) has proven to be a successful method in which to expand thinking and facilitate discussions of identity and culture.

I hope you enjoy the trip you are about to take into Lives in Two Languages! The Reader's Guide section provides questions that will stimulate contemplation and active discussions.

About the Author

Linda Watkins-Goffman has a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from New York University. She is a Professor at Eugenio Maria de Hostos Community College of the City University of New York where she is Chair of the Department of Language and Cognition. She also teaches graduate courses for ESL/Bilingual Certification at Jersey City University. Lives in Two Languages is Dr. Watkins-Goffman's fourth book; another recent book is the college reader Many Voices: A Multicultural Reader (co-authored by Richard Goffman) published by Prentice Hall/Pearson in 2001. She is currently working on a group of short stories, The Red Wagon, set in the rural south and a fifth textbook, Writing Lives: Exploring Identity through Literature and the Multicultural Experience to be published by the University of Michigan Press in 2005.

A Reader's Guide

These questions will guide you as you read the novels and excerpts from the novels that appear in Lives in Two Languages.

Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez
Lost in Translation by Eva Hoffman
Something to Declare by Julia Alvarez
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee
Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston