In Kamiwo Akira , when the grandmother scolds Akira and his friends:
Imagine a child born in Lima to a Japanese grandfather who never taught them Japanese. They grow up speaking español latino — the voseo , the seseo , the che that is Argentine but also not, the Caribbean swallowed syllables, the Andean slow precision. Then they go to Madrid, and someone says: No, that’s not Spanish. That’s español with an accent. kamiwo akira espa%C3%B1ol espa%C3%B1ol latino
And you — you are the verb that conjugates in neither. You exist in the subjunctive: si yo fuera , si yo hubiera sido , si yo pudiera ser — if I were, if I had been, if I could be. A grammatical mood of longing. A spiritual mood of becoming. In Kamiwo Akira , when the grandmother scolds