Bilingual Books and the Importance of Intersectional Representation
Lori Hashasian
Growing up in New Jersey, being bilingual seemed to be a fact of life. I learned to speak Armenian at the same time I learned English, and though my English improved drastically at school, my Armenian stayed steady. Through high school, most of my friends also came from immigrant families and spoke multiple languages at home. Being bilingual was nothing strange. It wasn’t until I got to college in Maine that I realized being bilingual was perhaps not as common everywhere as I thought it was.
Among my college friends, speaking a different language at home seemed to be an anomaly. Many people I met came from families that only spoke English, and although that makes sense, it came as a complete shock. Going to a grocery store or walking around campus and only hearing English felt foreign to me. I started to realize that something as simple as hearing languages I didn’t recognize felt like a huge absence in my life.
Around the same time last spring, I came across a book called Sorry, Bro by Taleen Voskuni. The book is a romcom about a queer Armenian woman named Nareh learning to embrace who she is. The feeling of holding that book in my hands for the first time was unlike anything I’d experienced before. I read the back cover over and over again, convinced I was misreading something. The fact that a queer storyline and an Armenian storyline could exist within the same pages brought me so much hope and peace.
I had read queer books before, and while many of them made me happy and shaped my perspective on what it means to be queer, none of the characters ever felt like me. Sure, there were parts of those books that I related to but there was always a core part of myself missing. Once I exited the pages, I was left to grapple with another huge part of my identity that was nowhere to be found. Sorry, Bro left no parts out. I was there on the pages, wholeheartedly. The book served as an invitation to allow myself to see the Armenian and queer parts of my identity as coexisting, rather than being opposing forces.
Part of what made the book especially impactful for me is that Voskuni does not shy away from using Armenian vocabulary or including the nuances of Armenian culture. Like in my own life, Nareh’s Armenian identity is not a side plot- it shapes everything she does. Voskuni starts each chapter with an Armenian proverb, written both in Armenian characters and translated into English. She sprinkles Armenian phrases throughout the work, sometimes translating and sometimes not. It is abundantly clear that the characters speak Armenian, not just because she says they do, but because she shows it. She shows that being bilingual is something to be proud of.
While books in all languages are important, bilingual books hold a special importance in normalizing intersectional identities. Like me, and like many others, the characters in Voskuni’s novel have more than one identity that shapes who they are and how they interact with the world. They learn to embrace all those different parts of themselves without having to sacrifice one to let others shine. It showed me that it is just as okay to be queer in Armenian spaces as it is in American spaces. Bilingual books have a unique ability to show readers that being a part of multiple communities does not make you less welcome in any individual one.
Bilingual books are also an important way to expose kids to new languages and cultures. During the school year, I read books in Spanish and Armenian to students at a local elementary school in Maine as part of a volunteer program called Multilingual Mainers. Once, after I read a bilingual book written in both Spanish and English, a student said, “I wish we could read that again, but just in Spanish this time.” I was touched by how willing the kids were to spend time learning something completely outside their comfort zone. A few students said their parents spoke another language, and a few had learned some Spanish at school, but many of them had never heard a story in a language other than English. I was surprised by how quickly they got it; even though they didn’t know what most of the words in the stories meant, they were able to understand the plot through our conversations and clues from the illustrations. I could see them get excited about learning a new language and was proud of them for asking questions and staying engaged.
Bilingual books teach all children an important lesson: that identities don’t exist in bubbles and intersectionality is beautiful. When kids see their whole selves represented in literature, they can learn to love themselves just as they are. When kids see characters who speak differently than them, they learn the importance of celebrating and learning about the identities of other people. Pride and Less Prejudice places these lessons at the forefront.
Here is a list of the bilingual books PLP currently features:
Antonio’s Card / La tarjeta de Antonio by Rigoberto González
One of a Kind, Like Me / Único como yo by Lauren Mayeno
Cuando Amamos Cantamos / When We Love Someone We Sing to Them by Ernesto Javier Martínez
Happy Reading!
