The Multilingual Self: Swimming the Depths With Lvovich

Something is missing in my way of functioning in English. Something substantial, important, which does not let me enjoy my linguistic performance. It is like I am floating on the surface of the ocean, giving curious glances into its depth. It’s like I am fishing for a deeper essence, and sometimes I get some fish, but they are separate fishes [sic], not the overall picture, with everything lying there, on the bottom. Frustrating….
I walk along New York streets—and they are prison to me. I want desperately to be back in Europe, to touch the old stones, to be lost in the nonparallel, noncrossing streets, to find familiarity in faces, clothes, and smells. I don’t like America. I hate New York. I hate my life (61).

Reading this passage, I abruptly entered Lvovich’s world and became a partner in her struggle not only to survive but also to succeed in America. With these words of angry desperation and candor, Lvovich shed her fantasy, threw wide the door to her multilingual self and pulled me in. Her story suddenly pulsed with life and resonated because I too have become angry and despairing while trying to acquire a new language and create a new identity.
In my case the new language is the professional language of linguistics and literacy, the language of SLA and linguistic researchers and theorists. But the deeper reality, the depths I fear and yet long to enter, is the new self I am building as graduate student and teacher of adult literacy. Until Lvovich came along, until I finally cracked open her book, I was one angry, isolated and despairing learner, “floating on the surface” and afraid of failure.
“I hate SLA!” I shouted one night flinging my “Ellis” across the room. My lament continued, “I will never get it; I am going to fail the class; I am too old for graduate school.” Fortunately, I didn’t give up. Instead I picked up Natasha Lvovich’s book, The Multilingual Self and began to read.

Here is a link to the remainder of the essay that I wrote for English B 8100 (SLA):

https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AejvYXPv3HOaZGY5N2RucXBfNjNmcDliNjIzOQ&hl=en