I want to speak like my own people. My daughter Zo , who has grown up a mile from my own childhood home, benefited from few of the many Franco-American supports I had in my childhood. Today she is living in French in Montreal, a student at l'universit de Montr al. When we speak, week after week, I notice her French growing and filling out. My daughter has had to go far from home to become bilingual.
Bilingualism is now hard to come by here.
On a visit to Dartmouth College with a friend, she was introduced to one of his professors, a New England history specialist, a man whose own family history was steeped in Anglo-America. After her answer there was a pause. Later she told me she merely smiled back at him. What's the use. It's hopeless with people like that.