It's always a compliment: "así" or "like that" is actually more often "tan bien" or "so fluently", either implicitly or explicitly. Sometimes it's an even higher compliment; not "¿dónde?", sino "¿por qué?"/not "where?", but "why?". Depending on who asks, sometimes I stifle the automatic response that comes to my lips (and I think we all know what that is). However, when I am being honest, this is one of maybe three things I would say that I do well. But still, my answer varies, also depending on who asks. "En Oaxaca." "De las canciones de José Alfredo Jiménez." "En el salón de clases." "De las telenovelas." or some combination of the aforementioned.
The last time I was asked, it was also a (back-handed) compliment, I think...but also not the kind of question I was expecting. Granted, it didn't help that I wasn't exactly feeling positively disposed toward that particular interviewer. It was the sort of situation in which proficiency in Spanish is a non-issue, not even mentioned. It should have been considered a given, given that it's been my vocation for more years than it hasn't and given what I'm doing with it now. Almost a month later, I realize I feel ever-so-slightly, perhaps, maybe sort of possibly, even though I probably have no right, almost, dare-I-say-it? ¿reverse?-discriminated against. After I briefly explained my various immersions with the language and cultures (leaving out the smart-ass references to pop culture), my interlocutor congratulated himself on pegging my "accent" as Mexican and followed up, surmising that I must feel myself to be "como en casa"/ "at home" in Mexico, among Mexicans and then asking how I'd absorbed so much culture (I heard the implied "for a gringa"). During the pause I cut a glance to his chagrined colleague, the one who knows and reads me like the Latin American Literature that is his specialty. More for the sake of this person I respect and love than for my developing academic reputation I didn't answer with what sometimes comes to mind. Of course it depends on who asks, but sometimes I'd love to say:
"You know...I think I probably started learning Spanish and absorbing a bit of México in utero. My mom was either already or veryvery soon to be pregnant with me when she went to Guadalajara back in '67 for a quickie divorce so she could marry my dad and she made a mini-vacation out of it." And when I'm feeling literary and/or bitchy and/or because I believe it, I want to add, "You know, magic realism happens to U.S. too sometimes!"
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