My project focuses on the intersection of language and human connection. It explores exactly how it is that language enables us to communicate to others, and how losing the connection of language means isolation and regret. It also explores family, and how family connections endure even in the face of adversity.
First, we have to begin with some background. I am Chinese, and I speak Cantonese - a dialect of Chinese. I used to be fluent in the language, as a product of growing up in a family of mainly Cantonese speakers. Then I started going to elementary school. Almost immediately, I began speaking mostly English, even at home. My father protested this at first. That conflict culminated in a fight where I proclaimed my identity as American, not Chinese, and dismissed the need to know Cantonese or learn Mandarin. But most of the loss of my language wasn’t as dramatic, nor was it an act of rebellion. I lost it because I didn’t speak it. Over the years, I began understanding and speaking it less and less. This led to several consequences.
First, my mother began speaking English more and more in order to keep up with me and my sister. I didn’t notice this until I began this project, quite honestly. A few weeks ago I was at home and talking to my mother, and noticed that her sentences were mostly English words, with Cantonese sprinkled in. Until now, I had simply assumed she was speaking Cantonese, or at the very least a liberal mix of both Cantonese and English. But no. Her vocabulary now is mainly English.
Second, my father retreated. He still speaks to me and my sister mostly in Cantonese, and disdains English at home. This has led to a disconnect between us. We don’t speak a lot at home. The language barrier remains impenetrable between us. I don’t understand a lot of Cantonese; he doesn’t understand a lot of English. Because of these two barriers, we aren’t very close.
Third, I ended up not having much communication with my grandparents. I can still speak to my father in English; conversations aren’t impossible. However, my grandparents only speak Cantonese. They understand very limited English. This means that conversations between us have ended up being the bare minimum of communication. I simply don’t have the vocabulary to talk to them. Words that I know in English shrivel up in Cantonese. It’s extremely frustrating too, because often I just barely know the word. It’s on the tip of my tongue. I just don’t have the confidence to say it and get it wrong, or I simply can’t remember it. Car rides with my grandparents, or meals with them - which we have every weekend or so - are quiet, strained affairs. It’s painful. I feel guilt every time.
So I resolved to do this project because of that guilt and sadness. Human connection is so important, and the distinct lack of it in my closest family was a source of stress for me. So I decided to try and do something about it. For my capstone, I decided to interview my grandparents and create portraits of them.
Over the course of the project, however, certain things changed. My central thesis about connection and language didn’t. However, I did start with a focus on my grandparents specifically, since I felt the most distance with them. But that changed when I did the interviews. I ended up conducting the interviews round-table, conference style instead of individually. Mostly, it was because I realized their answers would be mostly the same as each other’s. Another change is that I had my parents in the interviews, and they talked in the interviews too. I didn’t come into this thinking I would evaluate my relationships with my parents, but I’m glad I did. It gave me pause realizing that my inability to speak Cantonese had affected my relationships with them too.
My interviews were about my grandparents’ experiences immigrating to America. I asked them about how they felt coming to America, where they lived, how they worked - but I also asked them about the language barrier that exists between them and other Americans. All my grandparents talked about working in Chinese restaurants, which didn’t require them to speak English and surrounded them with other Chinese people. They talked about feeling regret about not speaking English - my grandpa said, at one point, “It’s too late for me to learn. I’m too old.” They also spoke about duty and family, how they came so their children would have opportunities, and how they worked late nights so they could send their children to school.
I paired my grandparents in their portraits, instead of doing singular portraits. I also decided to do portraits of my parents and one of myself. These choices spoke to the theme of family that I had in this project - the importance of the family unit and the connections between all these individuals.
At the end of the interviews, my grandpa on my father’s side said, “你想去吃午饭吗？/ Would you like to go to lunch with us sometime?”
