💬 No Language Is Illegal
The classroom buzzed with the voices of seven people people pretending to order coffee.
“Are you ready to order?”
“Drip coffee, please.”
“What size?”
The seven students in the English class I volunteer to teach Monday and Wednesday nights are from seven different countries. Japan, China, Turkey, Colombia, Mexico, Belarus, Brazil, it’s like a mini-UN meeting, only with a lot more snacks. They are all very smart adults—three of them are scientists, working in research labs at Philadelphia universities. The Japanese student is a pediatric cardiologist. At home, she performs heart surgery on children. Here, she’s frustrated over and over at not understanding what seem to be such simple words.
“You want room?”
“Uh…” she replies, her face crinkled in confusion.
“What do you think that question means?” I ask.
“I think… do you want a chair to sit in? Room to sit and drink coffee.”
“That’s a great guess. But actually, it means—do you want me to not fill up your entire cup with coffee, so you can add milk. Do you want room on top of your coffee?”
The cardiologist gasps. Her mouth literally drops open and her eyes light up. I’ve never in my life seen such a joyous face of instant recognition.
“WOW!” she says. “How Interesting! Wow. I never knew.”
She shakes her head, dazzled. I can’t stop smiling either. Moments where I teach someone something new, where I feel like a genuinely helpful human, are so rare. English class is full of these warm moments. But living in the United States as a non-native English speaker is also so often frustrating, isolating, and hard.
At the end of class, my co-teacher brings up two recent news items: a New York lawyer who threatened to call ICE on Spanish-speaking restaurant workers and a Montana Border Patrol agent who detained women for speaking Spanish in a gas station. The students all nod their heads. Every single one of them has heard about those stories. And they’ve each, at coffee shops or corner stores or at work, had their own bad interactions with Americans who have heard their accents and treated them rudely—sighing heavily and rolling their eyes, instead of slowing down, being patient, working to understand the person in front of them who’s putting in so much effort just to communicate.
The student from Mexico pipes up. “Sometimes, it feels like it’s illegal to speak Spanish,” he says.
I nod as my heart breaks.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I don't know what else to tell him. Times like these, even I don’t know the right words.
THIS WEEK'S COMIC
STUFF I MADE
Animated Video - I wrote a 90-second video about the year 2119... when the gender-based wage gap is finally projected to be close. Unfortunately, by that time, we now all live in space. The art in this video is by the talented Charis JB.
STUFF I LOVE
#HometoVote - Irish citizens who have moved all over the world are traveling back home to vote to repeal the country's ban on abortions. These stories made me genuinely tear up.
Comics for Choice - Last year, I wrote and drew a comic about birth control for the anthology Comics for Choice, a collection that raises money for the National Network for Abortion Funds. The anthology is in print in stores but it’s also now available as a free PDF—or for the cost of whatever you’d like to donate. Read up!
Shan Murphy - Artist Shan Murphy draws the most adorable comics and writes the funniest tweets. I have to stop myself from retweeting literally everything she posts.
San Antonio Shoes - How can we put humans on the moon and still not be able to design summer sandals that don’t turn my feet into meaty blister-sacks? It turns out, we have the technology! My friend Nickey Robo (who, BTW, sews her own awesome clothes) told me about San Antonio Shoes. I bought a pair of American-made sandals that look super chic and feel as comfy as luxurious moon-boots.
Queer Cat Pins - Top-notch cartoonist Isabella Rotman makes these adorable pins. Pride month is coming, so you better stock up.
Whichever Genius Designed, Printed, and Put Up These Stickers.
SOMEONE TO KNOW
Tommy Pico
I went to a poetry reading at Tattooed Mom's last week. Every poet was brilliant and the bar was selling perogis for 50 cents each. What a perfect night. I had never heard of poet Tommy Pico before he got up to perform, but his reading from his new book Junk blew me away. Check out this Buzzfeed interview with him or pick up Junk from Tin House. I always make a point to buy poetry books, because while poetry sales have doubled in the last year in the U.S. (!!!!) a "popular" poetry book still usually only sells about 2,000 copies.
Something to Do
Read One Long Magazine Article
Illustration by @ClareMallison
Does anyone else think their attention span is swiftly shrinking? My brain feels like an internet browser with 20 tabs open. So I was grateful when my friend Maura suggested we form a "longreads" club to read longer articles and discuss them. This week we're reading this article about Uber driving cabbies to suicide. But I also really want to talk about male rage, so someone please read Jia Tolentino's article and tell me your many thoughts.
P.S. I'm going to Mexico City for a week in June. What should I do there? Please send me your MXDF tips!
I’ll write to you in two weeks! In the meantime, keep in touch on Instagram and Twitter, okay? If this is your first time seeing this newsletter, you can subscribe here.