co v e r p ag e cont e st
[
m ot h e r l anguag e
]
w inn e r
Tina Alberni
I was born to an American mother and a
Cuban father. I not only grew-up in a multicultural
and multilingual household but I also lived abroad
for the first 17 years of life where Spanish was
essentially my first language. I lived in Puerto Rico
for a handful of years and then moved to Bogota,
Colombia where I lived into my late teenage years
before moving back to the States.
I can relate very much to the theme of Mother
language, linguistic diversity and multiculturalism
because it is all I know. I can’t imagine life without
two languages: English and Spanish, and I can’t
imagine life without perspectives. What I mean
by perspectives is that when you are