language as hospitality and resistance
One of my cousin’s sons married a woman who was born and raised in Ukraine. She moved here to go to school and continued on into graduate school in International Business. Even before Mira and Jesse married, Mira had become a US citizen.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, Mira put her businesses in other hands and devoted all of her time to providing aid to her native land. She has sent body armor, non-weapon drones, tourniquet kits and more by the planeload. And she has raised our family’s awareness about what is really behind Russia’s latest land grab. Conflict there is not new. Russia has been trying to thwart a free and independent Ukraine for hundreds of years.
One of the ways that Russia has tried to subjugate the Ukrainians is to prohibit school children from learning the Ukrainian language. If children are forced to speak Russian, then it doesn’t take long before their cultural identity as Ukrainians is also lost. For Ukrainians, teaching their language to their children is an act of resistance.
Last year, for our 50th wedding anniversary, Dave and I took a Rhine River cruise. In preparation, I decided to use a language app to learn some German…just enough to ask for directions without looking like an ugly American. It wasn’t as hard to learn another tongue as I had thought, so when we left Germany, I switched to learning Spanish. As a resident of Southern California, many of the people with whom I interact speak Spanish as their primary language. They are struggling to learn English. Might I endeavor to be hospitable to the foreigners around me by meeting them halfway?
Spanish is much harder than German. There are so many complicated verb tenses that I don’t expect to be able to speak it. But I persevere, because as our government wages a campaign to oust good, hard-working, tax-paying immigrants, primarily those of color and Hispanic cultural identity, learning their language is one small act of resistance. To learn someone’s language is an investment in them as human beings. It is to offer them a place at the linguistic table.
Love, Liz
“You, Lord God, bless everyone who cares for the poor…you make them happy here in this land, and you don’t hand them over to their enemies.” Psalm 41:1-2 CEV
