Bicultural Vida

This is our fourth year celebrating El Día de los Niños/El Día de los libros which happens on or around April 30 around the entire country. In honor of this very special day — because what could be better than celebrating kids and books, right? — we have put together a full week of reading related posts geared specifically towards bilingual children as well as an AMAZING giveaway that will allow one family to build its own bilingual home library forRead More ...

I admit it; I have used bribery with my kids before. I’m not proud of it and I don’t encourage it, but it is just one of those tools in the parenting toolbox that is available when all other tactics have failed. Some parents may disagree with me, but I willingly confess this child-rearing sin; my only problem is that the tables have turned. You see, the secret to a good “mordida” is finding out the one thing your childRead More ...

Yesterday was one of those days that I really, really wished Ana and I didn’t live so far apart. I woke up to the news that though it won’t hit shelves until Sept. 4, our book, Bilingual is Better, published by Bilingual Readers, is already available for pre-order on Amazon! And all I wanted to do was run out and give Ana ¡un abrazo fuertísimo! After all the sleepless nights and the many weekends spent encerrada in the library, I really don’tRead More ...

 Being raised by generations of Spanish speaking women has established a solid foundation of kitchen know-how. And while I would not consider myself a fluent Spanish speaker, I can talk my way around a Latino cocina just fine. Spending much of my childhood centered on good food and loving family has ensured that I could always speak the language of la comida, la cocina y el amor de mi familia. Since embarking into her toddler years, my sweet two yearRead More ...

Part of the first chapter in our forthcoming book, Bilingual is Better, deals with the ongoing debate of how we identify ourselves. Are we Latinos? Are we Hispanics? Or are we something else? So I was pretty interested in the results of a Pew Hispanic Center survey on this very topic that came out last week. I’ve never really liked the word Hispanic because I feel it implies I come from Spain, which I don’t. I’m okay with the word LatinaRead More ...

I’m tired…culturally exhausted. I could speak Spanish all day, no problema. But lately, it seems like that’s not enough for me to be accepted by Spanish speakers. I can’t change my deep-seated values or my general way of being, but I am feeling pressured to do so in order to just be part of my extended family. I’ve had some minor clashes with my mother-in-law and stepdaughters recently that are making me reevaluate how I’m really seen by the LatinoRead More ...

CNN’s Anderson Cooper is devoting this whole week to a special report called “Kids on Race: The Hidden Picture.” I don’t have cable, but I just watched the first segment, which aired last night, online and I must confess: I cried. I don’t know if you’ve watched it, but it was really difficult to watch a bunch of both white and black 6-year-olds — in other words, kids Vanessa’s age — talk about how the color of your skin mattersRead More ...

There are two things my mother-in-law and I had decided before Sabrina was born. The first was that she would be called Oma (abuelita in German) because she very much identifies with her German roots. Her family immigrated in the late 18th century to the United States via Russia. Both her parents (Sabrina’s bisabuelos) first language was German. The second thing we had decided was that she, being the Oma or second generation German-American, would speak to her in EnglishRead More ...