Mother Tongue

The Stoop

What’s it like when everyone at home speaks a language you don’t understand? That’s the story of Claudia, a Ghanaian American who grew up not speaking her home language —her ‘Mother Tongue’. But everybody else did, including her own siblings. The effects were real: disconnect, frustration, shame, and at some point a full on identity crisis. We also ask other people in the diaspora if they speak their home languages, and Hana contends with her own kids’ lack of fluency, and what it means.