Idioma flyer 

About This Item

Idioma was a Spanish conversation club that Lillian and I sort of came together to to create. During this time period, she had noticed that there was several students who were wanting to have a space to be able to speak in Spanish, but that wasn’t. That was more like. Small, intimate kind of not super open to the public

An interview with the contributor

Vanessa Elias

So again, it’s a digital photo, but it’s actually a screenshot of a flyer for an organization or like a Spanish conversation club called Idioma that I partnered with La Casa to add to its programming. So. Yeah, it’s a, it’s a flyer.

Interviewer

When and where did you acquire it? What year, city?

Vanessa Elias

So, this flyer was created by actually Leticia who was La Casa’s, like administrative assistant and graphic designer. It was created in fall of 2018. And so, I contributed some of the wording on it, but the design behind it, Leticia made. I’ll start with the background of it is actually the background of a Lotería card. So, we can see things like El Pajaro, La Sandia, El Diablo, El Catrin. So that’s kind of like transparent on the back part of the flyer. Then at the top across in red it says Idioma. And then in the middle it has a small box of text that describes what Idioma is, which I can talk about a little bit later. And then underneath that box of text, there’s some more text that outlines the different dates for when the Idioma meetings will be occurring in the Fall semester. This was Fall 2018. And then at the bottom, all the way at the bottom in the center is the La Casa logo.

Interviewer

Thank you. What is this object’s significance?

Vanessa Elias

So Idioma was a Spanish conversation club that Lillian and I sort of came together to to create. During this time period, she had noticed that there was several students who were wanting to have a space to be able to speak in Spanish, but that wasn’t. That was more like. Small, intimate kind of not super open to the public. So, students are coming here to La Casa. And so, she had approached me because she knew that my research interest sort of fell in thinking about Spanish bilinguals preserving their Spanish. So, she asked me if I would be willing to lead this conversation club, and I told her yes. So, we started. It was kind of like a pilot program pilot program to see, like, what what could happen. So, we would have, like, monthly meetings. They were different topics. We had like a a general one. It started in August, it was a general one. We had some board games that we played like Lotería and then the second one we watched a movie and had it was like a movie discussion. Then we had a cooking demonstration. I can’t remember what we made. I remember, I think one time we made empanadas and then another time. We tried to make things that were simple. I can’t remember what else we made. And then there was a study abroad informational for the November meeting and then the December meeting was together with La Parranda. So it was a pilot program. It lasted, I think, for about a year, a year and a half. We had some students come up come. Through but it. Was never a large group. It was maybe like five or six students and we’d just kind of sit around and speak in Spanish and however people wanted to express themselves, so it could be all Spanish or Spanish and English. But just like a, safe, intimate setting for people to just hang out and and speak in Spanish.

Interviewer

When you see this object, what kind of memories does it bring up?

Vanessa Elias

They were fun times. I’m trying to remember the students. I can picture some of their faces. This has been a long time. But it was it was it was a nice experiment. I would have wished that we could have kept it longer, but like participation kind of declined. So, we decided to not. To not continue with it, but it was kind of like my contribution to the community of, like different ways for to help students preserve their Spanish in non-formal settings.

Interviewer

If you’re an IU Alum, how does this object relate to your experience at IU?

Vanessa Elias

So, part of this is I think like kind of kind of what I said is. Sort of me giving back to the community, so I in the PhD I was studying Spanish heritage speakers, thinking about ways of bilingual language acquisition and how do people who grew up speaking Spanish at home but English in the school because they’re born in the US, how do we maintain being bilingual adults? So that’s kind of what I was studying, but I wanted. I was thinking through ways of like giving back to the community that was giving so much to me in terms. Of research, so I. Was often trying to find ways where I could contribute without like me taking things you know, like studying this population and things like that. So it was trying to find connections to like the community that was helping me a lot. So, so positive experiences and just like trying to think through like how you can put your research into practice with community members.

Interviewer

I feel that, I feel that. Now much of what you’ve talked about already kind of addresses this question, but I’ll answer it anyway. And if you just, you know, if you don’t want to answer it because you’ve already thought you covered it, then you don’t have to. How does this object relate to your identity?

Vanessa Elias

Yeah, I I could reiterate a little bit. Yeah, just like thinking about like my profile as a researcher or somebody who was studying, how do people maintain their heritage language, their Spanish? And this is like a program that people can think about, you know, having a safe space where people can feel comfortable speaking Spanish. Maybe it’s not super public in the open, especially in areas like where it’s predominantly white, where people might not feel safe speaking Spanish, you know, and like open spaces, like a cafe and things like that. We can think of programming to in safe settings so that people can express themselves without, well, hopefully minimizing their anxiety about using their home language.