Fiction Prompt
Memories and Our Mother Tongue
By Melissa Llanes Brownlee
Write down your very first memory. Use all the senses you remember. The smell, taste, feel of the air against your face, your skin. Were you angry? Were you sad? How did this affect the way you felt? Was it a big event—a party, something on TV? Or a tiny moment? Your mother holding your hand as you walked together, the grass, the sand, the dirt on your bare feet. Now, take this moment and rewrite it in the first language you ever learned. If your first language is not standard American English, see how this memory changes in your mother tongue. If your first language is standard American English, then consider the regional dialect you were raised with . . . the language your family used, the words, the phrases, and see if your memory feels different when funneled through your mother tongue, because a person from the South sounds and speaks very differently from someone raised in the Midwest. Language shapes our identity and how we view the world.