Author: Tomma Henckel

Upon the recommendation of Megan Gross and Lisa Sommers, our department sponsored a performance of Mother Tongue by The Performance Project’s First Generation Ensemble. The performance took place on September 28^th at the Bowker Auditorium, and several of our students and faculty attended.¹

Here we are highlighting the performance with the thoughtful and insightful responses and reflections of our students:

Xiangping Li:

The performers in Mother Tongue powerfully portrayed the challenges faced by first-generation immigrants from various countries who come to the United States. Some arrived with hopes of pursuing freedom and equality, only to find themselves living in fear due to their darker skin color. Others experienced alienation and isolation because of cultural and language barriers, struggling to find their place in the vast landscape of America. Some fought to define their gender identity on their own terms, rather than allowing others or their parents to decide it for them, yet they still faced misunderstanding, doubt, and mockery from those around them.

Through their performances, the actors illustrated the harsh realities of survival for first-generation immigrants, highlighting their struggles and aspirations. The small stage served as a window for the audience, including myself, to glimpse diverse cultures and life experiences. The challenges these immigrants face are not merely personal; they reflect deeper issues within American society. Due to a lack of accumulated cultural and material resources compared to long-established residents, first-generation immigrants often feel more vulnerable and lost in the face of these challenges.

This play served as a powerful reminder that much of the world’s misunderstanding and suffering arises from our failure to listen to others. I am grateful to the performers for their heartfelt efforts to raise awareness and break down the barriers of indifference related to race, gender, language, and culture. They succeeded in moving the audience, who responded with enthusiastic applause and heartfelt tears.

As a new immigrant myself, some of the stories depicted on stage resonated deeply with me. During my first few years in the U.S., while working at a pharmacy, I experienced discrimination from customers on two occasions. They told me I should be ashamed of my accented English and that I should go back to my country. I’m thankful that my manager and colleagues immediately stood up against this behavior, offering their strong support. I truly appreciate the impact of this play and hope these stories can be shared with a wider audience.

Madeline Peck:

Sitting in the audience at the performance of Mother Tongue felt like a passage to another world– an hour and a half suspended in time in which all that existed were the storytellers and the stories they entrusted with us. It wasn’t just a theater performance, it was a call to action. A call to not just listen to the youth, but to elevate, celebrate, and honor young people and their strength and wisdom. It made me think about the power of language and story amidst the heartbreak of being a human in a profoundly unjust world. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to receive these stories and witness these performers’ power. I hope to continue to embrace the transformation and personal revolution inspired by their artistry so it may influence my work in the world going forward.

Kim Moïse:

First Generation’s performance of Mother Tongue was unlike anything I’ve seen before. Every person’s stories were so unique and yet interwoven beautifully. Two stories really stuck with me: the story of a young woman losing her language, and the story of two people seeing each other as the one to be scared of, rather than the one that’s scared. I watched Mother Tongue through the lens of a first-generation American and first-generation college student. Growing up in a context where a native language began to fade felt like a profound loss, creating a sense of cultural isolation. Navigating life in an English-dominant environment, and the challenge of balancing identity with the expectations of multiple cultures quickly became disappointing and exhausting, expressed intimately in the performance. Additionally, the dynamic of being scared of those who may harbor their own fears about you—particularly in a racially charged environment—adds another layer of complexity. As a Black individual in predominantly white spaces, the reality is that my presence can evoke apprehension or stereotypes in others. Simultaneously, I can find myself uncertain of perceptions and intentions. So this shared fear/anxiety can create a barrier to genuine connection, reinforcing feelings of isolation that are captured in the performance as well. Overall, Mother Tongue invited me, and hopefully the rest of us, to reflect on these tensions and consider the possibility of dialogue and understanding. It’s a call to recognize that while language and cultural background shape our experiences, they don’t define us entirely. The performance emphasizes the importance of embracing vulnerability by sharing stories and reclaiming identities. It emphasized that my story isn’t just my own, but rather one that resonates with many who navigate similar challenges. The performance is truly a great piece of art that I’d encourage anyone to see.

1. Mother Tongue is an original multilingual physical theater performance created by the Performance Project’s First Generation Ensemble. “Mother Tongue” is inspired by the experiences of the ensemble members, their families and communities who are from Congo/Tanzania, Bhutan/Nepal, South Sudan/Darfur, Holyoke, and Springfield, Massachusetts. 
   The 90-minute performance weaves together movement, music, dance, and stories in Arabic, Swahili, Nepali, Spanish, and English. “Mother Tongue” incorporates themes of language, culture, identity, diaspora, hypermasculinity, transphobia, racism, the school to prison pipeline, and revolution. 
   Appropriate for ages 12 and up. ↩︎

I remember when Jo and I took a pandemic walk in 2021, and she brought up an idea she had toyed with over winter break. She was thinking about having some kind of ASL (American Sign Language) learning and conversation group in our Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences. As we made our way along a forest trail, we talked about our inability to communicate directly with our colleague Dana. Dana is a Deaf faculty member in our department who is a native signer, and I too had lamented the fact that I could not communicate better with her. Over the next weeks we kept talking about how useful it would be to learn ASL to be able to communicate with our colleague, our clients, and a whole community of signers. Thus an idea was born.

Jo had done some background work and found a video teaching series online in which a Deaf teacher of ASL goes through various lessons for self teaching (www.lifeprint.com). This would be a great support to a conversation group in our department without putting Dana in the position of having to teach us. We brought up the idea to her of having an informal weekly ASL conversation meeting for our department. To our delight, Dana was thrilled about the concept and wanted to be involved as a leader/teacher of ASL. Once we had a rough plan pulled together, we approached our department chair, who was very supportive and had been thinking along the same lines as she worked with the faculty to map out our departmental strategic plan. She created a committee that allowed this effort to fulfill Dana’s service work.

Since then, several of the faculty have met to learn and converse in ASL. And, for my part, I have had the time of my life and have rarely laughed so much. In faculty meetings, it is rare to have eye contact with Dana because she is intently watching the interpreter on her computer screen in order not to miss anything said in the meeting. (I sometimes find myself getting distracted from the meeting myself by trying to follow the interpreter’s translation.) But in our ASL groups, without the need for an interpreter, Dana comes alive.

Dana is a wonderful teacher and communicator, acting out any and all concepts with infectious enthusiasm and energy. She has shown us that ASL is a rich and descriptive language expressed with the whole body and face in addition to the hands. Facial expressions underscore the emotion/mood underlying all communication (for example the shape of the eyebrows indicate the kind of question–lowered for yes-no questions, raised for open-ended questions). Being a more introverted person, this kind of “acting out” has been difficult for me but is teaching me to show a little vulnerability in order to better get a message across. And despite my arthritic fingers, when I cannot get it across, there is always finger spelling to say a word or phrase.

As with any language I learn, the more I learn, the more confident I feel and the more I try to mentally express my thoughts in that language. But it takes consistent practice to keep the skills. When I recently ran into a former student who is a fluent signer with her Deaf parents, I was able to sign to them that I was happy to see them and that I am learning some ASL to add to my repertoire of rudimentary languages.

Tomma Henckel with Jo Shackelford and Dana Hoover – (photos by Jo)

Marci:

I have had the privilege of being one of the participants in the first class of the Multiculturalism Certificate as part of my Master’s in Speech-Language Pathology. I don’t think I can put into words how meaningful and transformative this certificate process has been. I have grown so much as an aspiring clinician and as a person through this process. 

For me personally, one of the most meaningful facets of the Multiculturalism Certificate has been the clinical journal entries. As part of the Multiculturalism Certificate requirements, we have been tasked with writing a weekly journal entry about our clinical experiences relating to multiculturalism in a broad sense. I have found myself mentally flagging experiences during the day, thinking to myself that this would be a good interaction to unpack in a journal entry or an experience/interaction related to a multicultural issue really bothered me for some reason so I need to examine that in a journal entry to figure out why. I’ve been building a list of experiences that warrant further exploration. Some experiences I have chosen to write about immediately, whereas others I wait for a few weeks or even months. Sometimes, I have found that distance from these experiences has better equipped me to examine that experience and learn from it. I don’t know what it is, but there has been something so powerful in unpacking clinical interactions and multicultural issues that come up in clinical practice in a journal entry that makes me better understand the client and myself. I usually learn a valuable life lesson that I want to apply moving forward when working with various populations. 

I think that the most valuable part of this clinical journal entry experience has been the interactions that I’ve had with my paired faculty advisor. Each of us in the Multicultural Certificate has been paired with a faculty member who reads our journal entries and responds to us about our entries. Having this dialogue with a highly seasoned clinician has helped me look at these interactions that I have struggled with from a different perspective. While journaling and self-reflection are invaluable tools, I have found that I get stuck at times, and there is a lot I don’t know that can help further my growth as an aspiring clinician and person. Tomma’s guidance has helped spur this growth so much more quickly and from another perspective. She helps me see that I am not the only one with these blind spots and helps me to forgive myself when I make a “mistake” from a multicultural perspective. I feel like my journal entries are a safe space where I can unpack areas I am struggling with that I am not comfortable to do so elsewhere.

Tomma:

When we thought up and developed the multicultural certificate program, it was clear that we needed to incorporate a significant clinical aspect for our students. One way to ensure that they were getting the most out of their clinical experiences with a variety of populations was to ask them to reflect on their experiences from a multicultural perspective, to reflect on their individual interactions, their responses (internal and external) and to process what they experienced and what they learned from these interactions and experiences. Thus we instituted weekly journal entries, each one analyzing an interaction with a different kind of patient/client.

When I was tasked with reading and discussing the students’ journal entries, I was excited and really looking forward to finding out what they were getting out of their clinical experiences, these journal assignments in particular, and the multicultural certificate in general. But reading Marci’s journal entries exceeded any of my expectations of what this process would look like. She approached each of her client interactions with an open-mindedness and selfless vulnerability that was heartwarming. It was clear with the progression of her journal entries that she took any and all of the thoughts and discussions to heart for future clinical interactions.

Life and lives are made up of stories; and each individual journal entry was a story in itself. Marci always reflected on her role in the story and on how she could make (or could have made) it a better story for her clients. The only part I had to caution her about in this process is that she not forget herself in these interactions. It is important to not be too self critical, to care for yourself and keep in mind that you are human and always learning. It is ok to seek help and you must forgive yourself when you do feel that you have made a “mistake”. Learn from it and move on, that’s what this multicultural certificate experience should be about.

(and every other time)

It is always a good idea to adhere to these communication strategies, especially when communicating with folks with hearing loss or language impairment. The upcoming holidays present a particularly important time to apply them when conversing with friends and family.

Do you have any additional suggestions? If yes, please put them in the comments section!

In November 2022, some of our graduate students in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences (then Communication Disorders) participated in Holyoke High School’s “You Can Be Anything You Want to Be” Career Day held in partnership with the United States Attorney’s Office District of Massachusetts as part of the Department of Justice’s nationwide Project Safe Neighborhoods initiative. You may have seen the story about this in our school’s newsletter:

https://www.umass.edu/public-health-sciences/news/inspiration-high-school-career-day

It gives a nice description and summary of the event and is well worth reading. But here I want to present the students’ voices in their entirety along with some more photos from the event:

“We were invited to present at Holyoke High School at the “You can be anything you want day,” where students learned about different career opportunities. The activity consisted of doing a short presentation for seven groups of students. After explaining to the students our role in the medical field, we presented a brief case study. They collaborated with us in identifying the treatment, tools, and professionals we would need to assess and treat the person described in the case. Students were engaged in the activity, and some were asking questions regarding the cases and how to become speech-language pathologists or audiologists. I hope these activities keep happening in the community so we can increase diversity in our field.”  – Ada Lopes Gonzalez, Ph.D. student, SLP

“Although this past November was my first time being at Holyoke High School, there was a sense of familiarity in being there. Holyoke’s demographic is made up of low-income families and has a large Hispanic/Latino population. 

Fortunately, and to my surprise, there were at least a handful of students who seemed interested in both speech language pathology and audiology— although many didn’t know what the fields entailed to begin with. 

Although us as grad students were there for the high school students, it was encouraging and inspiring for me personally to see a new group of young minds interested in fields that are often overlooked or generally unknown. I also discovered the field of audiology in high school, but didn’t see many professionals who looked like me. My hope in being there is that the students were further encouraged to pursue interests with a sense of inclusion and purpose.” – Kimberlee Moïse, Au.D. student

“From this outreach event I learned that not many high schoolers have an idea of what communication disorders is and how professionals in these fields serve as healthcare professionals. I could see many students were surprised and intrigued by both audiology and speech pathology. As an audiology student, this experience gave me the opportunity to be a career educator for the day. Communication disorders is a field that is rapidly growing and always in need of new professionals. Through talking about both audiology and speech pathology, I grew in my public speaking skills and my ability to communicate about the ins-and-outs of how important our role is to the community. I discovered the field when I was still in high school and so hope that we were able to ignite that excitement in the students who attended the “You Can Be Anything You Want to Be” career event.” – Anna-Maria D’Ambra, Au.D. student

When I moved to the United States at the age of 19, I had had the usual US History lessons of how Columbus “discovered America” and the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving, blah blah blah. Very little attention was given to the native peoples who already lived here or the African peoples who were forcibly brought here to help colonize the continent for a white minority. 

Once I lived here I became increasingly aware of the still unequal and inequitable regard of different groups of people, often along the lines of skin color and ethnicity. (Having grown up in post-war Germany, the word “race” was not considered a word that one could ethically apply to people, only to animals such as dogs or horses.) 

This pervasive prejudice bothered me, and I tried to educate myself on the historical contexts by reading books, non-fiction historical books as well as novels and poems that helped me understand the perspective of the oppressed. Life happened, but several years ago, amidst a number of the more publicized incidents of police violence against Black people, I took up this quest again. To be an ally, I had to immerse myself a little bit more in the Black cultures. When some friends who felt similarly uneducated suggested a book club, we decided to collectively read books written by African American or African women. 

Somewhat simultaneously, when working out the curriculum for the Multicultural Certificate in our department, I thought about how much some of these books I had been reading had helped expose me to different experiences and ideas and values of Black folks and other historically marginalized groups. I wanted to be able to share this opportunity with the reading groups that were to be part of the certificate’s capstone, and came up with the idea of a lending library with books that I had accumulated and read. Over time, I purchased many more books that I wanted to read and share with other staff and students in the department. 

Thus the lending library was born – it is currently set up on the third floor in our department building and includes several books for adults, young adults and children by and about people with diverse cultural experiences related to facets of identity such as race, ethnicity, gender, and different abilities. There is a sign-out sheet and you are welcome to borrow a book to read. Also if you have suggestions for more books (I could think of sooo many), please let me know.  

Here is a link to the list of books currently in this library. Please note that it is a work in progress: 

https://umass.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/SLHSFacultyStaff/Eeq1Yqa-ec1BmqF5e7t70hwBcYuvY9ewtmMU7hFOesSKCA?e=O80bwS

To honor Black History month, here are some books from the lending library that I read and that I recommend: 

Non-fiction – The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson tells the riveting story of the Great Migration of Black people from the south to northern states through the eyes of three people who experienced it and compares to previous historical migration stories. Well researched (Wilkerson interviewed more than 1000 people) and beautifully told. 

Fiction – The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is the compelling generational history about the Vignes twin sisters, each adopting different identities of their interracial family history. “Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.” (https://britbennett.com) 

Self-Help – What If I Say the Wrong Thing?: 25 Habits for Culturally Effective People by Vern? Myers provides you with some tips to help move you along on your personal and professional diversity journey. 

Young Adult – Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo is the captivating story about the realities of family, love, and death, in which the two sisters Yahaira and Camino connect across the ocean from New York to the Dominican Republic following their father’s death. The novel is partially written in verse that “reads like a dope NYC cipher — brilliant, unorthodox, and beautiful”. (https://socialjusticebooks.org/clap-when-you-land) 

Children – Mama’s Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation, written by Edwidge Danticat and illustrated by Leslie Staub for ages 5-8, “tells the story of a Haitian, immigrant family in the U.S. and a young girl who, amidst pain and separation, finds solace in her mother’s tales. As the protagonist overcomes some difficult challenges, she also learns to recognize the power of her own words”. (https://socialjusticebooks.org/mamas-nightingale-a-story-of-immigration-and-separation)