How I Learned English Book

Foreword   Ray Suarez     xi
Introduction   Tom Miller     xv
Acknowledgments     xix
Part 1
Learning English with Shotaro   Ruth Behar     3
Mississippi, Girdles, and John Wooden   Gabriel Rozman     9
Trilingual Ease   Franc J. Camara     13
Power   Marie Arana     19
Guillermo Cabrera Infante in the Wonderland of English   Suzanne Jill Levine     25
Pura Bicultura   Coco Fusco     29
Aria   Richard Rodriguez     33
Learning English by the Sinatra Method   Jose Serrano     37
From English Gentleman to Zelig   Alvaro Vargas Llosa     39
The Way of the Dinosaurs   Rafael Campo     45
My Two Tongues / Mis dos lenguas: On How I Came to Have a Forked Tongue   Liliana Valenzuela     53
Don Francisco's Six Steps to Better English   Mario Kreutzberger ("Don Francisco")     59
What Happened to Our Old Life?   Gigi Anders     63
Baseball Taught Me English   Orlando Cepeda     67
Ghost Boy   Francisco Goldman     69
The Special English Girls   Gioconda Belli     77
From Montevideo to Saginaw in One Easy Lesson   Nando Parrado     83
English: My Passport to Poetry and Theatre, Science and Life   Walter Mercado     87
When I Was a Little Cuban Boy   Richard Blanco     91
Part 2
Yellow Magazine   Elena Poniatowska     95
The Learning Curve   Ruben Martinez     99
A Subtitled Life   Enrique Fernandez     105
Shaping Language   Enrique Martinez Celaya     111
The Ultimate Challenge   Paquito D'Rivera     115
The Mexicans Who Speak English (Collected by Americo Paredes)   Anonymous     121
Dangerous English   Johanna Castillo     123
Ay Doan Peek Eenglee; or, No me pica la ingle (My Groin Doesn't Itch)   Jose Kozer     125
Amerika, America   Ilan Stavans     131
Jose Manue...You Don't Know No English   Jesus Vega     135
The Tremendous Assimilation Happened to Me   Piri Thomas     139
Once Upon a Time on the Border   Gabriel Trujillo Munoz     141
Better English through Unions   Byron Silva     149
English Helped My Golf    Lorena Ochoa     153
My Stepmother Tongue   Patricia de Santana Pinho     157
From Basic Training to Fluent English   Jose Bajandas     163
The Secret Language   Daisy Zamora     167
Fluid, Dynamic, and Mischievous   Miguel Barnet     173
My Tongue Is Divided into Two   Quique Aviles     175
Part 3
The Blessings of Arroz con Mango   Cristina Saralegui     185
Who Knew Desi Arnaz Wasn't White?   H. G. Carrillo     189
Wordsranintoeachother   Esmeralda Santiago     197
Really   Josefina Lopez     201
English Lessons and the Berlitz System   German Arciniegas     203
Soda and Nylons-Learning English Was No Pignic   Guillermo Linares     209
Good Food and a Good Fastball Taught Me English   Juan Marichal     213
Breaking Down the Glass Walls of Language   Ariel Dorfman     217
How I Learned English...or Did I?   Mayra Montero     221
Nothing Seemed Unreachable after Traveling through Europe in a Used Red Lada   Alejandro Necochea     225
Doris Day, John Kennedy, and Me   Teresa Mendez-Faith      229
Advantages of the Civilized World   Oscar Hijuelos     235
El Dobbing and My English   Ignacio Padilla     237
Writing in Between   Rosario Ferre     241
Pink Floyd Taught Me English   Roberto Quesada     247
The Trouble with English   Gloria Lopez-Stafford     251
My Cuban Parents Learn English in Night School   Virgil Suarez     257
English Is Cuh-ray-zee   Richard Lederer   Josh White Jr.     259
Afterword   Frank McCourt     261
Translators     265
Copyrights/Permissions     266
About the Editor     268