"Foreign Speaking English"

"I have always looked for what is foreign to my nativity. I don't want to understand what I already know. I want to feel confused, be bewildered, sense awe, make the comfortable, uncomfortable. I want to misplace myself. When I am misplaced –– I am noticed –– as a misplacement –– and I like to be figured out –– as somebody who you have to keep misplacing, and changing the view you had, because the foreigner is invading the native –– the native is becoming foreign –– and in a country where foreigners become natives –– and natives foreigners –– language must be demolished and rebuilt –– not on a geographical continent with a boundary called flag, but in the infinite space of a nutshell."

"I am a foreign tourist. I have no roots. I am not a plant. I have a voice. I sing. I sing from my stomach and I sing from my brain and I sing from my diaphragm and from my womb. I rock in a cradle and I piss and shit on roots. I am not stuck in dirt like a plant. I walk on my feet and conduct with my hands an orchestra of thoughts. They all sing from different locations –– from the balcony –– from the basement –– from the address where I left off yesterday –– from the e-mail I don't know how to open –– from a gift I opened last night (the package gave me anxiety when I opened it) –– from nobody is home –– home has no return address –– no telephone –– no TV –– no e-mail –– nothing that comforts my spirit –– nothing that says I live here because I was born here because I don't believe my country is the place where I was born nor the one I was raised to be who I am and I don't have a who I am in I am who I was or who I will be."

-- Giannina Braschi in United States of Banana, on being a Hispanic person speaking English in America

When you are an outsider, you start to like being an outsider. It feels special. I first encountered United States of Banana when doing research for a presentation of Rimbaud's Ophélie. I think the Wikipedia page on Ophelia mentioned that Braschi used her as a character in the novel, and I clicked on it, and it seemed so interesting that I made my dad buy it when he was in the States. I've just started to read it now. It's a very intensely American story, I think. Although it criticises capitalism and consumerism and all the workings of American culture it's obvious that Braschi loves America, her adopted country, her home. She tries to make sense of the suffering of 9/11. I think for a non-American it's a very intense book to read. But I like how much love she has for her country. When you love your country, wholly and sincerely, you don't forgive it. When I was all caught up in Motherland Discourse™I forgave China because I only loved it because it felt like a safe place, the only safe place I had. When you cling onto something desperately you forgive it, but you don't love it. You're more of a leech, like... Snape re: Lily Potter. Okay, well. I hope one day I can create something that's as much about pure, sincere, innocent patriotism (and not the toxic, awful jingoism you see everywhere today) as United States of Banana is (or at least, the first 40 pages so far).

I also really love Rimbaud. In real life he must have been unbearable. He must have been a toxic person, the kind who sucks the life out of other people. He ruined Verlaine's life. I really like Ophélie. It's delicate and morose. I don't even know what morose means. It just sounds appropriate.

I

Sur l'onde calme et noire où dorment les étoiles

La blanche Ophélia flotte comme un grand lys,

Flotte très lentement, couchée en ses longs voiles...

- On entend dans les bois lointains des hallalis.

Voici plus de mille ans que la triste Ophélie

Passe, fantôme blanc, sur le long fleuve noir

Voici plus de mille ans que sa douce folie

Murmure sa romance à la brise du soir

Le vent baise ses seins et déploie en corolle

Ses grands voiles bercés mollement par les eaux ;

Les saules frissonnants pleurent sur son épaule,

Sur son grand front rêveur s'inclinent les roseaux.

Les nénuphars froissés soupirent autour d'elle ;

Elle éveille parfois, dans un aune qui dort,

Quelque nid, d'où s'échappe un petit frisson d'aile :

- Un chant mystérieux tombe des astres d'or

II

O pâle Ophélia ! belle comme la neige !

Oui tu mourus, enfant, par un fleuve emporté !

C'est que les vents tombant des grand monts de Norwège

T'avaient parlé tout bas de l'âpre liberté ;

C'est qu'un souffle, tordant ta grande chevelure,

À ton esprit rêveur portait d'étranges bruits,

Que ton coeur écoutait le chant de la Nature

Dans les plaintes de l'arbre et les soupirs des nuits ;

C'est que la voix des mers folles, immense râle,

Brisait ton sein d'enfant, trop humain et trop doux ;

C'est qu'un matin d'avril, un beau cavalier pâle,

Un pauvre fou, s'assit muet à tes genoux !

Ciel ! Amour ! Liberté ! Quel rêve, ô pauvre Folle !

Tu te fondais à lui comme une neige au feu :

Tes grandes visions étranglaient ta parole

- Et l'Infini terrible éffara ton oeil bleu !

III

- Et le Poète dit qu'aux rayons des étoiles

Tu viens chercher, la nuit, les fleurs que tu cueillis ;

Et qu'il a vu sur l'eau, couchée en ses longs voiles,

La blanche Ophélia flotter, comme un grand lys.

I found it effective to read Braschi out loud (in my head), to myself. I imagined a breathy, raspy voice that would rise into cadences that could sound either painful or pleasured or both. Like Aristophanes, or that girl at the Le Rosey poetry competition whose voice sounded like death in a blizzard.  Perhaps someday I'll record an audiobook of this novel.
Braschi on English / America post-9/11:

"Shame on you. Liar. You lied to me. You lied to the world. You came looking for yourself. You were smelling your own dirty deeds –– your own weapons of mass destruction. No weapon of mass destruction ever destroys another weapon of mass destruction. What are destroyed by the weapons of mass destruction are the masses. You came looking for the dictator and you found yourself. You come from a land of mass destruction. English is a language of mass destruction. Lady Macbeth is a queen of mass destruction. Lear is a king of mass destruction. Hamlet is a prince of mass destruction. Shakespeare is a bard of mass destruction. And Moby Dick is a whale of mass destruction. Why are you a culture of death and destruction? Why do you obliterate villages, cities, and civilisations with your language of mass destruction? Is the destruction worth the destruction? For what purpose did you destroy my language? To impose the sovereignty of your rule of law with weapons of mass destruction –– to then say:

"–– I offer you my lifesaver. Now we can communicate in the same language. English only, please."