Writer’s Backstory Translanguaging Myself through Poetry

y earliest memories of Guaraní—one of two official languages in Paraguay, along with Spanish—are split between foreign and domestic. At home, my father tied up the landline for hours barking into the handset, his inescapable volume due partly to an innate conversational intensity. But the connection was also incredibly poor, relayed from our house in exurban Central Illinois, bounced between any number of international operators, and finally routed to the public phone