Ednin D. Martinez

It was 1989 and in the Dominican Republic, Juan Luis Guerra’s songs were blowing up. 

“Ojala que llueva café en el campo 

Que caiga un aguacero de yuca y té

Del cielo una jarina de queso blanco

Y al Sur una montaña de berro y miel ….

Ojala que llueva café ”

“Ojala Que Llueva Café”, was all over the radio; a catchy merengue where a chorus of children summoned a higher power, melodically asking for coffee beans to fall like rain in the countryside. A metaphorical prayer in song. The lyrics shone a light on the hunger and poverty in the farmlands of D.R.  Juan Luis also released “Buscando Visa Para Un Sueno” that same year. In this song he wrote about the plight of Dominicans in securing a visa to the U.S. Its literal translation: Looking for a visa to fulfill a dream. Nostalgia escaped from the orchestra’s trumpets as the song ascended to the chorus. 

Meanwhile in the U.S., Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative” was number one on the Billboard Hot 100, while Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up” was not too far behind at number four. The thing was, I had only been in the U.S. a few months and although I knew how to say a few choppy phrases, words like “prerogative” made me feel like I had landed on another galaxy. Despite my challenges with English those first few years, once I started to learn, it felt like I had infiltrated a fascinating new world. 

English soon became a fun past-time, a hobby.  When someone spoke the language around me, I’d analyze every syllable for context clues. Read facial expressions with precision and listened for cadence and tone like a movie director. With time, I became a decent English student, enamored with the flowery romanticism poetry offered. Feeling challenged, yet intrigued, by the fast pace of a scene in a fiction novel. 

My first introduction to poetry was in Ms. Sciacattano’s Fifth grade ESL class. I fell in love with its musicality, its rhythm. The way the combination of words made my heart swell with emotion. It was fun. To me, song lyrics sounded like poetry when read out loud without the music. And when I read poetry, it was like an entire symphony simultaneously played along in my head. The following school year I learned the lyrics to Mariah Carey’s Emotions: 

“You’ve got me feeling emotions

deeper than I’ve ever dreamed of.

You’ve got me feeling emotions.

Higher than the heavens above”

The soothing melody and at times even the pain in her voice urged me look up every word. I needed to figure out what she could possibly be saying that made her feel so deeply, what compelled her to throw in those reverberating high notes. First, I’d find them in a dictionary, then I’d look up similar words in a thesaurus. I remember wanting to recreate those sentiments and began emulating her songs in my own poetry, starting with simple, playful rhymes inspired by young love: 

Like unplanned melody escaping from your cello…

Surprisingly mellow and sweet.

Unspoken poetry,

That’s irrational and senseless…

Yet engages your senses

Like Caribbean drums,

Drumming rhythmic salsa beats.

With time and the help of heartbreaking life experiences like my divorce, my poetry eventually became deeper, at times an ode to my own pain.  Words in both Spanish and English were my refuge when I was heartbroken. Every poem I wrote, every essay, a warm blanket around my heart offering comfort and ease. And as a true Mariah fan, I needed to evoke that pain onto paper, make my readers feel it too. 

She banned Latino radio stations. 

The string guitar in a bachata conjured cascades of tears that swelled tacitly; a tsunami.

Approaching its victim…

Slowly, Gracefully…

Before wiping out masses to their deaths. 

Survivors pulsated with transient pain…

But hers, 

Eternal.

Like a deep bone marrow bruise she couldn’t massage away.

Le dolia el Corazon…

And at times she walked on earth, soulless.

Sola. 

By then, language, whether English or Spanish, was my compass. It helped me navigate the world. As a teenager, I’d describe how I felt about a crush, or a cause that enraged my young heart. In those same years, I’d write letters to my parents after we’d get into fights, some explaining my “feelings” and some just long detailed apologies. 

Mastering the English language became my superpower.  I’d help my parents write letters to the landlord or creditors. Like the time my sister and I were living with alone with Papi in that roach infested apartment on Central Avenue. Mami had not arrived yet. Papi, even with his limited English knew there were laws that protected us. So, after months of complaining about the roaches with no change, he decided to withhold rent. 

“No le voy a pagar nada a esa malvada,” he said with conviction swearing he was not going to give the landlord a dime, as if my nine-year-old sister and I understood what he was doing. Inevitably, the landlord took him to court.  

“Que dice ahi?” Papi said exasperated, wanting me to translate at the speed of lighting, forgetting that I had just started learning. 

“Esperate Papi dejame leerlo!” I answered annoyed pleading for him to give me time to digest the words. 

Slowly, I helped my dad translate what I could. I don’t recall what happened in court, but I remember that a few months later we moved to a new apartment. 

By high school, I managed to comprehend English fluently and was able to score well enough on the SATs despite my treacherous relationship with math. I went to college and even got into law school through an affirmative action program founded to help students from historically underrepresented communities.  I was sitting on the front stoop of the house my parents bought summer of my junior year in high school when my Samsung flip phone rang.  I answered and my heart immediately raced as I heard Professor Saunders’ voice on the other end. My cohort classmates and I had expected this call for days now. We had talked about the issues on the exam ad nauseum, cried, prayed, worried, and rooted for one another.

“You scored well on your exams, but it was your entrance essay that I was most impressed with, your story spoke to me, it moved me, but the work begins now,” she said. 

It was almost three months of grueling work in the classrooms of the massive law school building. We had never-ending days and nights in a library that felt like Antarctica on the hottest summer days. The most difficult part was spending an entire summer in a place that felt like I never quite belonged.  But I was going to law school!  I was bursting with pride not for getting into law school, but because it was my writing, my words, my story that convinced her I could do well in law school. That I deserved a seat in that class.  I thanked her profusely through tears and ran upstairs to tell my parents. 

It had not been easy at all. In the summer of 2003, thirty of us took criminal law, legal research and writing and were given final exams as if we were already in our first semester of law school.  I think I ate, breathed and had law coming out of my pores. It was one of the most challenging academic endeavors I had taken on. I had time for no one. I did not socialize and became the “study monster” my sister later coined me during the rest of my law school career. My classmates and I formed study groups, stayed at the library until midnight, recited case law like it was gospel, outlined and quizzed each other in the ice-cold study rooms of the library. Only fifteen out of thirty of us made it that Fall. 

In law school, the challenges with English renewed. This was not the English I first learned. There, I was forced to inhale thick textbooks filled with caselaw from the 1800 and 1900’s. These dinosaurs were mostly in old English, forcing me to pick up a Black’s Law and a Spanish-English dictionary to try to at least understand the basics. Later in my career, I’d use that law school English, and my little collection of English words as the foundation to the legal writing I did on the bar exam, defend my clients in court and write briefs I’d later argue before the New Jersey Supreme Court.

 I continued advocating for the rights of my friends and family, and more often than I’d like to admit, my own. Language. The one thing I could cling to for dear life. The thing that let me be one hundred percent myself. That didn’t judge me or put me in a box. I could write in English or Spanish, or both at once.  Writing was like breathing. I was able to evoke emotion in a lover, express unconditional love, write a poem for my sister and brother-in-law on their wedding day, say parting words of love for my abuela at her funeral. 

Viven en mi estas bellas memorias

Aunque la casa ahora este dicierta y oscura…

Aunque solo rosan por alli fantasmas, 

Y tus rosas ya no crescan. 

What I didn’t realize was that the use of words to show love, affection, to protect, advocate, bid farewell to a loved one were not my own tradition. This didn’t just magically come to me. It was passed down. A family relic. Every time Mami wrote us a letter in 90 and 91 when we were separated by the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. 

“ Cuida a tu hermanita, hagan sus tareas. 

 Lavala detrás de las orejas. Y también el cuello. Péinala bien.” 

Instructions to a ten-year-old on how to care for her eight-year-old sister. Every word curated by her love for us, guilt due to the divorce and that she didn’t move to the U.S. with us. Regret that she couldn’t order us to do any of these things in person.

Papi passed it down too. He wrote poetry in Spanish in his earlier life. Won Mami over with his love letters and convinced her to marry him for a second time. Language, both Spanish and English saved my life. It changed the course of my life. Words in both languages opened up worlds I never thought I’d ever get to explore, let alone thrive in. I am grateful for the power that words have, whether in Spanish, my native language or English, the language that bore witness to my growth into womanhood. 

Language has been my greatest weapon in some of the most significant areas of my life. Like that time when I tried and defended an attempted murder case where my young schizophrenic Dominican client defended himself against a heinous attack in his own home, but was criminally charged instead. My words made the jury relate to him, see him as a human being, and hear the full story before making their decision. He was acquitted after being in jail for eleven months without being able to post bail. A bail that I managed to get reduced from a quarter of a million dollars to ten thousand during the course of four bail hearings, but that his family could still not afford. 

The jury entered the court that afternoon as the court clerk simultaneously asked us all to stand: “All rise.” We stood up, my client stood to my left, hands shaking, waiting on the jury’s verdict. The foreperson read their verdict out loud, starting with the top count, “on the charge of attempted murder, we find the defendant not guilty.” My client almost collapsed next to me, put his head on my shoulder, sobbed uncontrollably with relief and thanked me. 

A year ago, I gave a TEDX talk on systemic racism and colorism, and used language to tell stories about my childhood in the Dominican Republic and the U.S. I wove in anecdotes from my childhood, college and law school years to illustrate how systemic racism and colorism existed then in both countries and still exists culturally and institutionally today. I also asked my audience to consider educating themselves and their children about people who are different than they are in order to effect change in the world and leave it a better place. 

Although I believe in the good of people, and that we are all born with good intentions, I also believe that our experiences and upbringing shape who we become later in life. Don’t get me wrong, I know the evil that exists out in the world, I’ve experienced some of it myself.  But I still believe that some of us are truly here to help one another. To try to make a real difference in this world, starting with our own communities. I want people to use language to advocate for themselves and others.  To express love and gratitude. To heal. To fight for justice in ways that leave a mark. Make an impact, save themselves and each other. I believe that language can save us all.