Elaine Romero | My Grandfather's Path Inspired me to Achieve More

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My Journey to #AchieveMore

When I was a kid, my grandfather who spoke both English and Spanish beautifully. He vowed to learn a new English word every day. For that day, he would go around the house trying that new word out. No one dared correct his pronunciation. He had a fourth-grade education. And I believe that was his greatest wound. He wanted more for his daughters. He wanted them to #AchieveMore. He worked really hard, selling advertising to companies and sent them to college. My mother started college at 16. I, myself, was hooded with my MFA in Playwriting the day before I turned twenty-four. At my grandparents' home, the dueling languages of English and Spanish spoke a subtext of privilege and poverty. The English tongue won, and, strangely, I became a writer—a playwright, and now, an Associate Professor. The story of language and education, who has been given it and who has been denied, has shaped me and spurred me to #AchieveMore as a professor, writer, and human being. The other day, one of my playwriting students had written a play in Spanish. We had been reading their plays aloud in class. I believed we could #AchieveMore, so I asked if they were willing to read the play in Spanish. And they did. All the students cried. This month at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, my play, Revoluciones, is being performed as a co-production with Foro Shakespeare (Mexico City) and the Latino Theatre Company (LA). With a director and cast from Mexico City, we're doing the show in Spanish with English subtitles even though I wrote it in English. As I listen to the Spanish tongue on my words, I want to #AchieveMore toward language equity for all students, so that they, too, can know the emotional rewards of dramatic self-expression.

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