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

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.

Lost in Translation by Eva Hoffman

Questions from the excerpts in Lives in Two Languages

First excerpt: (p.32)

1. How is Eva's diary different from what it might have been had she remained in Poland?
2. What does Eva mean when she says that her diary is about her and not about her at the same time?
3. What does Eva mean when she writes about her "English self " that "exists more easily in the abstract sphere of thoughts and observations than in the world. " (p. 121, Lost in Translation)

Second excerpt: (p.34)

1. Why does adolescent Eva feel less confident in her appearance?
2. How does culture influence standards of beauty and attractiveness in girls and women?

Third excerpt: (p.36)

1. Why does Eva feel that her sense of detachment isn't real or genuine?
2. Why did her friend say that he saw her "with a steel rod running down the middle of her back"? (p.139)

Fourth Excerpt (p.37)

1. How is triangulation a metaphor for Eva's acculturation process? Is it a negative or positive way of adapting to a new culture?
2. What part does language play in the process?
3. How is detachment a characteristic in the triangulation process?

Questions from the Memoir Lost in Translation

1. Why do you think that the 1960s was a confusing time to immigrate to the United States?
2. What can we learn from Eva's experience that can help us assist children who immigrate as adolescents, particularly in the classroom?
3. What does Eva Hoffman have in common with Richard Rodriguez? Did she develop a public and private language?
4. Eva Hoffman discusses the following more common responses to acculturation: development of voice in the public language, detachment and renunciation, the need to overachieve, overidealization of the native culture, loss of confidence and self-esteem, and the need to triangulate experience. Can you think of other responses and strategies that you have observed or experienced?

Eva Hoffman continues the exploration into some of these same issues in Exit into History: A Journey Through a New Eastern Europe (1994).

See also:

Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez
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