Hayley Jacobson
There is a new memoir in town, telling the life of a bilingual speaker and all the things she’s done with that skill.
Memoirist Janet Kurtz describes Northern Shores, Southern Borders: Revelations of a Bilingual Life, as a compilation of stories over a lifetime of being a bilingual English-Spanish speaker.
By fifteen, Kurtz was on her way to Mexico to improve her Spanish, unaware that it would infer itself into a lifetime of bilingual adventures. After that, she went to college and received a degree in Spanish, and now has 30 years of teaching under her belt at both the high school and college levels.
The memoir, which took two years to write recounts a variety of stories, all of which were experiences directly related to her Spanish speaking and translation skills, says Kurtz.
From translating in the ER after a woman was kicked in the face by a cow, to her time in the Central American Overground Railroad, Kurtz’s adventures with translations are far and wide .
For one story, she used cassette tapes she recorded to her parents while she was studying abroad in the 70’s.
“Calls were so expensive.” Kurtz said, “it was cheaper to send cassettes through the mail.”
In the memoir, she uses these tapes as a juxtaposition to her mother’s side in the story, where it felt like she was writing about someone else entirely, Kurtz said.
At the moment, the book is only being sold through the Central Lakes College bookstore.
Kurtz says that she is very grateful for new writers, readers, and for all her supporters.
“We all have stories; you just have to write them down!” Kurtz said.