Writing Rights: Roisin Medina McNamara (16) - Culture, Language and the Right to Express Myself.

Roisin Medina McNamara (16) loves English, reading, music and film but the most important thing to her is her family and keeping her Latin American heritage alive. Roisin's Mother is from Nicaragua and her Father is from Co. Offaly. Roisin talks about how important the right to her culture and language is in her life and how much she cherishes the right to express herself proudly in both her native languages and in both her national identities.

Accompanying Music: 'Train Track' by Michael Gallen, Mark Gavin and Robert Hope

© West Pole Music and Management Ltd.

Fighting Words is a creative writing centre established by Roddy Doyle and Sean Love. http://www.fightingwords.ie/

Transcript below.

Music.

I’m Roisin Medina-McNamara and I’m 16 years old and I’m mixed race. My Mom is from Nicaragua and my Dad is from Offaly. (*laughs) So it’s a mix. And I grew up around my Moms family so culturally, I have some very Latin American traits which is interesting considering I was born here. The right to express myself would be the most important right to me because I believe it’s a very kind of fundamental freedom that everyone should have. The right to express my family’s culture cos I speak Spanish, we had Quinceanera for my 15th birthday, stuff like that, ya’know what I mean that is really important for us to have the right. I think if I didn’t have the right to speak my own language, I would feel alienated. I would feel completely disconnected from that part of me, from that part of my family. My skin is different, my body is different, my language is different. It’s very strange to have to try to explain, but I’d feel very disconnected from my Mam and my Latin American family. I go out with my Granny here and we only speak Spanish cos she doesn’t good English and if I didn’t have that, I’d have no proper connection with that part of myself. To not have that, I can’t even imagine how that would be. It’s just such a huge part of my identity.

Music.