I think that a part of this poem attempts to show the tension that a child from an immigrant family can feel due to learning and knowing two languages. Children pick up languages much faster than adults, and the narrator of this poem is likely surrounded by English speakers throughout her day. The tension is noticeable when the father demands that English be spoken outside the house, but Spanish should be spoken inside the house. This is where I think the poem gets interesting, because I think a reader's feelings will change depending on who they sympathize with. Children are likely to sympathize with the narrator, because a parent making an unreasonable demand will resonate closely with them; however, I tend to sympathize with the father. He goes to work. His daughter goes to school, and they are separated for hours. He cannot influence her as much as he used to be able to, and that scares him. She is physically moving away from him; however, as she becomes more and more fluent in English, she moves away from him linguistically and culturally as well. That probably scares him, and we see that fear in the final stanza, where the father stands outside her verses "half in fear." He demands Spanish from her in the home in an attempt for them to stay closer, yet deep down he knows that his daughter is a fuller person because of her language capabilities. That's why he still loves to hear her words and is still proud of her:
I like to think he knew that, even when,
proud (orgulloso) of his daughter’s pen,
he stood outside mis versos, half in fear
of words he loved but wanted not to hear.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46542/bilingual-bilingue
"Bilingual/Bilingüe" by Rhina P. Espaillat explores the internal conflict of a bilingual girl as she navigates the world in two languages. In the poem, the father of the bilingual child wishes to keep English and Spanish separate in his daughter's life. Spanish is to be spoken inside the house, and English is to be spoken out in the world. However, for the daughter, a young girl, this separation of her life is not so simple. She cannot as easily divide her life based on the borders that her father wishes to impose upon her. Her father understandably does not want her to lose her Spanish language/culture, and so he seeks to keep their native language close to home and close to his daughter's heart.
This is an incredibly understandable response in world in which people who are immigrants or second-generation citizens in predominantly English-speaking countries are often expected to forget and cast aside their native language. This a sad and terrible form of cultural erasure, and the girl's father does not wish for this to occur. His daughter does not seek to forget her native tongue either—rather, she seeks to experience her world in a more fluid and organic melding of her bilingual existence.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46542/bilingual-bilingue
"Bilingual/Bilingüe" is a poem by Rhina P. Espaillat that deals with the tensions inherent in living a life in two languages simultaneously. The poet expresses the difficulties experienced by bilingual children whose parents seek to "divide the world," which, for the child, cannot be so easily split into two sections.
The poet uses parentheses to visually represent the desire of her father to keep Spanish "separate" from English: "one there, / one here (allá y aquí)." Just as the Spanish words are divided from the rest of the text by the clean barriers of the parentheses, the poet's father also wishes to make a distinction between the two languages: "English outside this door, Spanish inside." However, for the speaker, this desire on her father's part makes her feel as if he wishes to "lock the alien part" of her heart away from him, making part of his daughter inaccessible or inadmissible.
Because of this behavior on the part of her father, the daughter learns to be secretive; English becomes a treasure to be "hoarded" while her "heart was one," rather than the divided thing her father would like it to be. Ultimately, the poet knows that her father is "proud (orgulloso) of his daughter's pen"—proud of her writing ability—but also that he is "half in fear / of words he loved but wanted not to hear." Notably, in the final couplet of the poem, the poet incorporates Spanish "mis versos" into the line without recourse to parentheses: her own approach to her bilingualism is to consider her two languages holistically, without enforcing a divide between the two parts of herself.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46542/bilingual-bilingue
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