What I found the most interesting in the poem Zulus in Percival Everett’s book re: f (gesture) is the use and inclusion of a variety of languages. In some of the stanzas, Everett included lines of romance languages such as Spanish, French, and Latin. I personally was only able to decipher one of the lines, the Spanish, without using a translator. Being fluent in more than one language in this country is most commonly thought of as unnecessary. However I think that in this poem, Everett is trying to show us how ignorant American culture is when it comes to knowing and considering other people’s cultures and languages.
The first few quotes he uses within stanzas are English, but as the poem goes on the language in the quotes begins to change. The first stanza reveals the quote “And thin partitions do their bounds divide,” and then a few stanzas later we see a change (Everett). “De donde vienos, amor, mi ninos,” appears under the stanza dedicated to “F” and translates to: where are you from, love, my children. As the poem goes one, the languages change and the more I found it difficult to understand because I did not know what the lines meant.
The United States is a very individualistic culture, however collectivist in a sense that we all conform in regards to language. Why as a culture do we feel the need to isolate ourselves from other cultures? I myself grew up only knowing one language. I took Spanish in high school and a few upper level courses in college but I am nowhere close to being fluent. In my travels abroad, this only proved as an inconvenience to not only me but the people with whom I was trying to interact with. Never before had I felt more ignorant than when I was on a boat to the island of Capri off of Italy. As a tourist destination, most of what was said was in English. What amazed me the most though was when our guide was able to fluently shift from English to French, and then from French to Italian, and then from Italian to German. Not only is it frustrating to not being able to understand, but it is discouraging to think that I will most likely never learn more than one language to the extent that I know English because of the pressures of American cultures to accomplish things that are deemed more important such as accomplishing a certain academic status, and making a certain amount of money. Learning another language is not always seen as practical because I think a lot of people assume that the rest of the world has submitted to learning English. English is something that is built into curriculum in places whose first language is otherwise. Yes, a lot of the world outside of the United States knows English, but I think that our lack of education about other languages adds to the bad image that other countries already have of the United States and its disregard for other cultures.