Languages, writing and immigrants

I recently read an article about a dutch writer, Pia de Jong, who moved to the U.S. and was finding it difficult to write in English. She states that "she wasn't prepared for what the loss of (her) native language would mean for her."I have often felt this "loss" given the fact that I have moved. Although I am from Mexico, I do not consider Spanish to be my native language, however, I am from the U.S. so saying that my native language is English is often met with baffled faces. After five years of pondering about this issue, I have made peace with the fact that both Spanish and English are my native languages, but the only language that I truly cultivated for writing was English. As opposed to what de Jong says, I find English to be a very rich language, but I am aware that the richness I find is my own creativity. Conversations, novels, poetry and even communicating with a significant other have always been more fruitful in English. 

And yet, what can an immigrant writer do to continue writing and publishing? I often asked myself this when I lived in Mexico and would write. Everything I wrote was in English and the places to publish in English were few. What I came up with back then was to teach myself to write in Spanish. I often did, and, although I wasn't completely satisfied, I did improve. Since I have always spoken in Spanish with my family, it wasn't too hard. I had a Spanish speaking voice, I just needed to work on my Spanish writing voice. However, I am in the same conundrum once again. I will now live in the Netherlands and will once again be faced with the obstacles of writing, but this time the obstacle will be a bit tougher. I am barely learning Dutch, and although I have a knack for languages, writing in Dutch will be a whole new adventure. I have no Dutch voice. I will have to acquire this voice as I learn the language and adapt to living in the Netherlands. De Jong states in the article that she just couldn't find richness in the English language because "the Dutch have several words to describe their long light at the end of the day; Americans use only two: 'dusk' or 'twilight.'" The truth is that as I write this, I do not know how to say dusk or twilight in Dutch and this is just a small sample of the hundreds of Dutch words I do not know. 

The wonderful part to this conundrum is that I want to learn. I want to write and read and talk and think in Dutch and Spanish and English and Italian and French and whatever new language I decide to learn in a couple of years. I want to find the richness in the five languages I know. Perhaps I can start a new literary genre: the immigrant genre where one story, one novel, one poem, one essay can have a few words in a different language because the writer just couldn't find that sentiment or image in just one language. Languages given us more options to express ourselves. Wouldn't it be wonderful to exploit this in writing?

**The Dutch words I found for "twiling" and "dusk" are schemering, avondschemering, schemerlicht, schemerdonker, schemeravond, and halfdonker.**

To read de Jong's account please click on the following link: Washington Post: Finding my voice in a new language