- When I came to Chicago from Guatemala, with my family,
I was 15 years old and we were so surprised
how different things were here in Chicago.
For example, in Guatemala we have lakes.
We have rivers.
And we went to see the Lake Michigan for the first time.
And it was so huge.
It didn't look like a lake.
It looked like an ocean.
We couldn't believe that it was a lake.
We had stores in Guatemala where we buy our groceries,
but there were tiny grocery stores.
Here they are humongous stores that,
where you could get lost for days.
And here everybody spoke English.
My family and I, we spoke Spanish.
Well, my family spoke Spanish because I could barely speak.
When I was a kid, I suffered from a speech impediment.
I used to stutter.
And when I came to the USA,
because of the shock, culture of everything from moving,
I started stuttering again, even though I had been able to
get over my stuttering earlier on.
And I thought to myself, oh,
now I'm not only going to stutter in Spanish,
I'm going to stutter in English too!
(crowd laughs)
Another thing that was different
here in Chicago from Guatemala, was that in Guatemala,
we go to school during the summertime.
And we have vacations on the wintertime.
Here, you go to school in the winter
and you have vacation in the summer.
So we came to Chicago on the summer,
which meant we didn't have to go to school.
But instead of spending the time at the lake
or the park, having fun, we spent the time at home
because everywhere that we went, things were so different.
We felt, we felt so alien.
We feel like we didn't belong.
In fact, the only place where we felt at home, was at home.
At our tiny apartment, we could watch TV all day long.
We could watch,
we could watch Univision and Telemundo.
We could see and watch people speak in Spanish.
We could watch all the shows
that we used to watch in Guatemala.
And then in the afternoons,
when my mother came back from work,
and she changed the channel to watch her novellas,
her soap operas,
we will sit with our mom and watch the novellas too.
Which is kind of strange because in Guatemala
guys are not supposed to be watching novellas.
But we were like "Novellas!"
(crowd laughs)
But the best part, the best part was the weekends.
My mom would come from work on Friday nights
and she will send us to the video stores.
Remember those? (crowd laughs)
and she will send us to rent three videos
from the selection of Spanish music at the,
the Spanish movies at the video store.
In Guatemala were too poor to even,
to ever go to the, to the movie theater.
And here we could watch all the classical Mexican movies.
It was amazing.
But then, we started going to school a few months later.
And two weeks into the, two weeks into the school year,
my brother came home. He was really worried.
He had a worried look on his face and he told me
"I need your help.”
So I am older than him for five years, of course,
I wanted to help him. I'm like, how can I help you?
And he was like,
"I have a test tomorrow, and I need your help studying.”
I told my brother, you are really fricking smart.
You can memorize anything. Why are you so worried?
But he say, because it's going to be an oral test.
I have to go in front of the class.
And I have to say all the names of the capitals and the,
the states and the capitals here on the USA.
Now I was worried.
Because the idea of an oral test scared me to death.
Like I told you, I used to stutter and to make things worse,
not only had my stuttering come back,
but to make things worse,
my mother, like every other parent from an immigrant,
decided that since I was going to school
and I was the older,
I was going to be the official translator.
Only days prior,
we had gone on a sightseeing tour of Chicago
and we had gotten lost.
So my mom decided,
that I was going to go talk to a police officer
and ask for directions.
So instead of being like,
no, no, no, I'm not going to it.
I decided, I'm going to walk ahead of my mom.
And I went to see the police officer
and I just pretended to be talking to him.
(crowd laughs)
And then I went back to my mom,
and I gave her the made up directions.
(crowd laughs)
You wouldn't believe it
but we got lost really bad that day.
(crowd laughs)
Eventually we found our way, but it wasn't thanks to me.
I didn't help at all.
So now that my brother is asking me for help,
I decided that I'm going to help him as much as I can.
So I started to write all the names of the states
and the capitals on pieces of paper.
And then I show him a piece of paper for him to repeat it.
And he's,
"I
O
W
A"
Perfect! I told my brother,
he was trying to say, Iowa.
You see, the problem was
that in our time limit
here in the United States,
the only thing that we have been able to memorize was the,
♪ A, b, c, d, e, f, g ♪
the alphabet song.
So we were taking every letter and we were putting in
one next to the other to make up,
how you pronounce the names.
Now, if we messed up, Iowa
just imagined what we did with Kentucky and Mississippi.
(crowd laughs)
But my brother studied,
and we thought that he was ready.
He had memorized every single state and the capitals,
the way we pronounce them, but he had memorized them.
So he went to school and the next day
I'm waiting for him, I'm like really excited.
And I asked him, so how did it go?
And he starts crying.
"Made fun of me. Everybody was laughing at me.
Even the teacher was screaming at me that I didn't study."
And I felt so sad for my brother,
because he had studied so hard.
And I felt so mad because I wasn't able to help my brother.
Again, I wasn't able to help.
So I decided, we're going to change the way things are doing,
the way we are doing things here.
For now on, no more Telemundo, no more Univision.
we're going to watch TV in English only.
And my brother said "Yes!"
So that's what we started to do.
We went to school and when we came back from school,
we would watch The Cosby Show.
(crowd laughs)
Before we learned about all the allegations against him.
(crowd laughs)
We watched Roseanne.
before we learned that
she actually hates undocumented immigrants.
(crowd laughs)
We watched the Simpsons on Fox. Uh-huh
Before we learned that we shouldn't be watching Fox
because they hate immigrants.
(crowd laughs)
And then when my mother came back from work
and she switched the channel to her novellas,
we didn't watch novellas with her anymore.
Instead, we went to our room
and we studied the words that we had learned.
Especially the crazy words by Bart Simpson.
"In my shorts! Cowabunga, dude!"
(crowd laughs)
And sometimes my mom would come into the room.
(speaking in Spanish)
"Are you guys talking about me?"
Sometimes we were.
(crowd laughs)
But most of the time we were just trying to learn English.
The only time where we allowed to watch,
where we allow ourselves to watch TV in Spanish
was on the weekends.
We could see the Mexican movies with our mom.
But then a couple of weeks later, when my mom,
when my mom sent us to the video store.
I decided, I'm going to rent one movie in English.
So I did that. And that night after,
after we watched one of the Mexican movies,
I took out the movie that I had rented in English,
without permission, I put it, to play.
It was the Eddie Murphy Raw Special.
(crowd laughs)
Hey, I thought it was a regular movie.
With a beginning, a middle, an end, a story, a plot.
but it was just this guy talking funny things
one after another one that we couldn't understand anything.
So we watched for a little bit,
and then I fast forward the movie, pay attention, and nothing.
I fast forward the movie again, and nothing.
I fast forward the movie one more time,
And then I saw the guy was moving his leg up and down.
To the sound of the music.
(starts singing)
then he did a little jump, a little scream.
(screams)
And he did the moonwalk.
He was making fun of Michael Jackson.
We knew who Michael Jackson was. It was so fricking funny.
It was hilarious. (crowd laughs)
My brother and I started to point on one another
and the TV. "Funny! Funny!"
I was sitting on the floor in front of the sofa,
and I turned back to watch my mom
who was sitting on the sofa to see her reaction.
And I saw her face and she had this look on her face.
She was looking at me and my brother, like,
she didn't know who we were.
Like, we were strangers.
Like we were alien to her.
So I told my brother, why don't you go in the kitchen
and get some popcorn and some sodas?
And my brother, who always loves to eat,
immediately got up, like, "Yeah!” and went to the kitchen
and while he put the popcorn on the microwave,
I stopped the movie. I took it out,
and I put one of the Mexican movies on.
And then when my brother came back with the popcorn,
he saw that Mexican movie on,
and he just went and sat right next to my mom
and cuddled up to my mom and my mom hugged him.
And I wanted to do the same, but I was a teenager.
So I wasn't going to do, you know too cool to do that.
So I got up from the floor
and I sat on the other side of the sofa,
and I watched my mom, and I watched my brother.
And I knew, that we had to get used to this country.
That we had to learn how to speak English
so we could get good grades and a good job.
But that night, on that tiny apartment,
we just needed to be a family.
Thank you.