Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides welcome to Talking to grandma, a weekly podcast that elevates stories, science and strategies to help you raise and teach multilingual and bilingual children. I'm your host, Dr. Madani come at me this founder and CEO of a single generation, an organization that helps children with radicalism in their bones stay connected to their heritage languages and cultures. I'm also a Harvard educated author who has experienced losing recovering and passing on my heritage language to my children. Whether you are a parent, grandparent, teacher, researcher, school leader, or simply someone interested in the topics of language learning and language preservation, this podcast is for you. Through interviews with amazing guests and solo episodes, you will find the resources, guidance and strategies needed to support you and your journey. Let's get started. In today's episode, Carmen canard discusses her journey of embracing and maintaining black language throughout her life, despite the challenges she faced in academia, looking

Carmen Kynard back on it now and you know that I'm in a black church. So then there's a sort of Black Desert black language is just surrounding me. And as I get further in school, is I'm making decisions that I'm not going to I'm not giving this up. Not for the people around me. And I still feel like that now. Yeah, especially in school. I'm not I'm not giving this up. Because no matter even if I've been told that I need to, I'm being told that I need to give up like language more and more. But what is also happening is I'm also developing an analysis of wildlife This is

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides common canard is a Lillian referee chair in rhetoric and composition and professor of English at Texas Christian University. Her award winning research, teaching and scholarship, interrogate anti racism, black feminist pedagogies, Afro digital black cultures and languages and the politics of schooling with an emphasis on composition and literacy studies. She traces her research and her teaching at her website, education, liberation on black radical traditions, which has garnered over 2 million hits since its inception in 2012. Stick around to hear Carmen's message of resilience, joy and the pursuit of a more inclusive and equitable education system. Thank you so much for being on the show. Carmen. It is such an honor to have you on as a guest. Our podcast focuses on heritage language preservation, and bilingualism, black language and black people are often left out of the discussion when it comes to bilingualism. So can you share a little bit about your definition of black language and if you view it as a heritage language?

Carmen Kynard Thank you for that question. Yes, absolutely view it as a heritage language and absolutely view it as a kind of bilingualism by dialect realism by culturalism. Maybe even sort of a multi it even in multiple iterations, even just sort of regional differences. And also, if we begin to think of like language, in a diet or in a kind of diet score away, where we're also talking about Jamaican nation language, Trinidadian nation language, and even you know, outside of the bounds of English, if you're talking about Haitian Creole, that there is there are ways that that black people are not just relating to language but doing language in for black, political, black, cultural, black communication needs that are inherently different that are going to have to be different for just in terms of black survival and just in sort of winning in any political moment where you think that black life or black opportunity is improving. You get that you get a quick slap in the face and see the white backlash just coming right back for you. And and that way I also in my my own life, I didn't necessarily develop a very specific consciousness about the language that I use to talk about language. So maybe later and by later I mean, like, like junior high school, but there was a kind of, I had a very black interior life and still do but I was raised with a very black interior life, that it was attempting to keep me safe from white institutions. So and in that way, language is also developing and very important in that way, in that space, and, you know, in ways that I wasn't necessarily articulating because I was simply living.

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides Yeah, yeah. Could you tell us a little bit about your relationship to black language from you? Know how that shifted, as you said, from childhood, from your home life to entering the school system to now you're in academia, which isn't necessarily the most welcoming place for black language. So how has your relationship to black language your heritage language shifted over the years?

Carmen Kynard I would say that it's a it's a kind of story of a of a deliberate defiance that has just blossomed. We'll call it a blossoming I'm gonna go ahead and call it a blossoming because I grew up in Ohio and Toledo, Ohio. So this is Northwest Ohio, and I and I grew up in a very, it was very segregated. Again, I don't know that I knew it was separate or that I called a segregated you know, I like to think of it now. But I feel like that's, that's white language. I think of it now as a very black interior life. And, and the positive that that that means so even so. So. So for instance, like my first memory of school was probably getting bused in first grade. So like, here's a bus into this what was what was before a black, I mean, a very white Elementary School. And at one point, I remember, at the end of the day, they didn't have enough buses. So what they would do, a good majority of the white of the white kids walked home and therefore the parents came about them. And then But then there was a busload of white kids those white kids got taken home first. And the black kids all had to wait until the buses came back to pick us up and take us and what I didn't realize just, I couldn't articulate. I just I couldn't articulate just how much that process and that practice was designed to mark us as inferior and unwanted because in that space we had there was one I had in the in the lower elementary grades. I had this first grade teacher named Mr. Earl, her name is probably not miserable. Now. You know, I thought of her as a really old person, but in hindsight, she had to be about maybe 2324. She was quite young, but you know at that in first grade, I thought that was like, you know, dinosaurs. So there weren't that many black kids in my first grade class, but you know what, we were waiting for the second bus to come we will all group together. We will we will with her. And I remember that more than anything I learned. It was absolutely wonderful. It's like we had like a bubble gum eating contest. We could blow the biggest bubble and I you know, I beat everyone with blowing bubbles and and that was a promise to her that we wouldn't chew bubble gum unless we were with her. And then I was like this queen, but like, like, and then there was like all these sort of like hand clap games. And so that is sort of what school looked like there was this sort of segregated space where black children were. But it was also a cocoon of like culture of like language. And you have like by first grade, you know, Rappers Delight by the Sugarhill Gang is out. And so you're like, you know, performing, you know? This is not a test. I'm rapping to the beat, right? So we're performing all of this. And it's it's literally there with me all the time. I begin to have I want to say in junior high school, I'm in honors classes. And I'm round more white, more white kids. And I remember my best friend Leah, we had this. We made this a some of the other black kids in class were doing I guess what people would today call calls, which I don't like the language of code switching, but they were doing the thing where they taught very differently in these in this white classroom space. Then when we got in the hallways where all our black friends are when we were in the classes where they were they they weren't tracked. So it was a tracking system, basically. And I remember being in seventh grade and have this conversation with Lea that we will not go change our language to sit up here talk to these white girls. And so you know that they didn't and we just didn't care and then you don't have what black kids were doing in that moment. So this was like the black friends of mine who I only see in the hallway. We have this intricate letter writing system where we're passing notes in the hallway to one another and like updating each other on our lives and what we're doing and I reason I remember that because we signed those letters with a you made a big ol s and you said just sweet Sodexo system and this is this is and so looking back on it now it is you know that I'm in a black church. So then there's a sort of black there's a black language is just surrounding me. And as I get further in school, is I'm making decisions that I'm not going to I'm not giving this up. Not for these people around me. And I still feel like that now. Yeah, especially in school. I'm not I'm not giving this up. Because no matter even if I've been told that I need to, I'm being told that I need to give up black language more and more. But what is also happening is I'm also developing an analysis of why whiteness is required.

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that there's so much to dig into there. I'm want to learn more about where that conviction came from as a young child to say, I'm not going to switch. I'm not going to I want to I want to know more about code switching and why that term. you view it as something that you don't want to use or problematic and also how you were able to identify so early that you weren't going to switch your language for the benefit or for the comfort of the white audience or the white gaze. And I think about my experience growing up in my neighborhood, which was largely black and Latino. And there was like one white kid in the whole school right and so I as I graduated from high school, went to college, got my masters got my doctorate my surroundings just got more and more weight and I saw it as code switching. I saw myself as code switching. And I'm also like, then when you do it for so long, and you're surrounded by that for so long, you kind of get stuck in that code. Like it's like I use my home language dialect not Spanish, but just the way that I would speak English growing up only when I'm at home which is not all the time or not as frequent. So yeah, I'd love to learn more about like how you were grounded in that conviction that you weren't going to shift so early and so young and how you maintain and stay in that now in the world of academia.

Carmen Kynard I think at some point, like when I was younger, particularly, I want to say high school is really developed and in high school because I really just saw I didn't really see school as part of my life. or I shouldn't say it was it's a big part of your life. You have spent so much time there. And that gave me so much homework and I think oh, I mean like they just you know they they do the most but the schools thing, but I didn't see it as like it was just a hustle because at this point and I saw school because I grew up very poor. School was a way out of poverty. I knew I wasn't going to play any kind of athletics because I just you know that that's that's a wrap for me. I also knew I wasn't going to be like an entertainer or singer, because I can't know so I didn't my only option was cool. And this was you know, and it was just very obvious that it had rules. There are things that you needed to do. There were certain kinds of ways to get get a scholarship, but I you know, the other thing I never thought of school as learning I never saw myself learning. I was just, you know, even so, like I want to say in high school, like I was in these honors English classes. And I mean this is the most this is also very ironic, like, I hate English and history classes. It's ironic. That's what I do now. I really like math, really, because math is the answer and you didn't have to deal with all this other all this other foolishness that they were talking about, and all this boring life stuff. And so like one of the things I usually like to do in my English class in high school, which is also very white. I'm in a private home and private high school now, but what I would do and in high school is like you could figure out which of and it was it always intersected with wealth, white wealth. You could tell which which girls the nuns liked the best and which answers they like the best. So I didn't read a single book in high school. Wow, I got A's throughout high school English. I just copy I just won't listen to what the popular with the important white girls were saying. And you know, I'm just stupid. I would just refute what she was saying. Or I would add another example. And you know, and so, and the white nuns loved it. So that was through high school, but I didn't you know, because I needed the aid to go to college so I could get a job, but I wouldn't read that stuff. And I was I was only listening to lit up so this was part of it. And then in college, that relationship, college that gets challenged because college is literally the first place where I'm reading black writers, hitting black women writers, and I'm looking at what they do with language. And I'm seeing like, you know, so I'm in college at the first time I think it was Terry McMillan. Alice Walker, Toni Morrison are both on the New York Times bestsellers list. And this has never been in you know, in the history of publishing and writing and I'm looking at the characters and the people who they writing writing about I recognize them. And I never thought about I never wanted to be a creative right I never thought of myself someone who's gonna be a fiction writer. When I wanted my writing this out like that. I have a problem or the problem that became and also was at this point this is also sort of you know, the the early Bell Hooks might be maybe on her third or fourth book at this time only four so I'm also reading Bell Hooks heavenly belt I feel like our language is very academic was also very specific girl is um, and like I you know, and I'm taking these like women's studies classes, these feminist studies classes and my white women professors are telling me, I'm saying, you know, I want to sound like Bell Hooks, I want to write like bell hooks, and they're telling me I can't that that's not what academic writing is. But they are signing her. And so at that point, I'm like, I don't trust why feminism. I don't trust my feminist. And I'm, you know, the kind of ally these performances of ally ship fall apart at the language porn ballpark. I couldn't speak just lipstick the black woman professor has she was sort of a visiting professor. And it was a class where all we did was read Toni Morrison. And I think one of the papers I decided to write a letter to Sula as a imagining myself as a little black girl learning from her. And this professor told me that made me rewrite it that this wasn't appropriate. This isn't the way you talk about literature. I just thought if I rest I won't bougie and compromise and tokenized Yeah, and I you know, and at that point, I remember rewriting the paper and deciding I was not going to do that every it was the deciding I was very torn because it was a black professor. And I didn't want to drop the class and I didn't want to write her a negative evaluation, because why shouldn't student evaluations count space and a student about what a black professor really counted? And so I was kind of conundrum about around black solidarity, even though she was only known as far as I was concerned. It made me and I think those two experiences may have been in the same semester elephants a semester. Definitely the same game. And so I started, I started picking my professors differently. I want to see people walk with a talk and not just because because that particular black woman professor look very similar to white women who are co opting black women's texts, but not really meeting it. And so you know, and I began to question these people who do this thing where black language is what you put in quotation marks when you put someone else and versus not what not how you speak. And being very clear that that's not was or no person was doing. That is what you're doing at this white university that continues throughout. It hasn't happened at my current institution, but at my previous institution, where like the white chair of the department will call me in and try to explain to me that the language that I'm using on my syllabus is inappropriate, you know, non tenured, I'm a tenured professor, and people still try to call me in and I'm like, I remember my and then my last institution, this was this at the City University of New York. It is 75% Black or Latino. And the white chair the white chair woman calls me in to explain my language to me and how it's inappropriate and so she wants me to revise it, and so I revise it to do it anymore. And then I even made a video to go with it.

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides Oh, wow. I mean, just hearing every not even every but like all of the times in which you are actively being confronted with someone who may look like they understand or that they support black language pushing against the existence of it in certain spaces, saying that it doesn't belong and just like I'm reflecting on the not only do you have to exist in this academic space, and do the work of that and the academic rigor of that, but also the mental work that you're doing in order to respond to all of these different reactions to your humanity to your existence to your language, which is a lot and a lot just in, you know, I guess, like you said, maybe it looks like we're advancing as a society and we're starting to more publicly say black lives matter and it feels like we're having more ethnic studies and you know, anti racism discussions and then now we have a white lash right, which is like a complete, I guess, outright, denial of the right for certain texts or language or identities. To be present in academic spaces from universities to preschools. And so I'd love to hear a little bit about your thoughts on like, how you're experiencing that and how you think that impacts black students and black families like everyday families that are going into schools that are leaving and existing in these environments.

Carmen Kynard I kind of feel like it's in some ways it is. It's almost like a gut punch in the sense that was like, I will say, people who have a political analysis of white supremacy, understand that school was never a safe space. And in these moments where it looked like there was an opening, not know that's that's, that's, that's taken that's taken back. I think the thing to the place of hope or encouragement, I would, I would say in all of this is this this, this backlash is a response to success. It is and it's you know, as much as people tried to turn the tide, turn back the turn back the time to write the hands of time. wasters, you really don't have that kind of power. That's just not how the universe works. Right. So even all around book bands, I mean, we have more. I mean, sort of just thinking about like, I love while, I mean the kind of in what kinds of things that are available. For brown and black children and while you're in the stories are just amazing and beautiful in ways that I just didn't even have access to growing up. So I'm 52 That wasn't something that I had access to.

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides I'm just going to name our audience quickly why l is young adult literature. So what your you know, teenagers might be reading

Carmen Kynard so yeah, so like this, this kind of just this I mean, complete outpouring of a kind of, of stories in and fiction and novels, where the main protagonists are teenagers who are black and brown and who are going through really real stuff and some of it in like magical you got you can get magical stuff you can get real stuff you can't get just stories of friends. Just what's what's what's available. The book bands alone are not going to stop that trend. It's just but you can see why it's responding to that. So it's just a reminder this is something you still have to fight for. And you know and worth fighting for. Because like I said, like these these these books in these stories have been incredibly beautiful. So for instance, this sort of step back, this sort of constantly wanting to go back that kind of white supremacy wants wants you to do, what communities of color can step back to like there's no matter where you step back to there's amazing resilience. They're facing resistance or amazing protests. So even I'm thinking about I'm blanking, blanking on the name of the study. And the author's remember, it was a study out of Chicago. And it was two there was two authors and what they were studying these different dozens of black families. And they acknowledged sort of some of the limitations of the study and how they were doing it, but they wanted to see they basically had these two groups of parents, one group of parents who are constantly reminding black children. I want to say that so negatively, but their focus with their own children was on white supremacy and what racism was going was going to be and do to them. And there was another group of black parents who really they talked about that when they have to, but mostly, they envelop their, their kids in stories of black culture, and black empowerment. You know, with more of maybe, what we might call an African centered lens, very much about the arts. And when, when they looked when they follow up on young people, and a look at them. In high school and in college, you know, sort of look to make sure that the the resources and economics and the salaries all these kinds of things are similar to their big like economic or political differences between these families. But ones who were enveloped in this black culture apparatus were more resilient in schools. They were healthier and understanding themselves through college, and were less depressed, all of these kinds of all these kinds of things. So I think that like I think that the lesson would have liked this study is like this is this is like 20 years old now at least 20 years from when I was in grad school when I read it, but I think the lesson there still holds is that not sort of gem growing young black people to making them think that this is nothing for you. You're just doomed to the eternal hell of your blackness versus looking at just this kind of the richness of a black interior life of a black cultural life. I think that's the it's, our communities have always done. We need to keep doing it. Wow,

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides that's really powerful. And it makes me think a lot about positive racial identity development and how incredibly important that is for like you said resiliency, you know, race doesn't conversations about race doesn't always have to focus on our pain or our suffering or all of the, you know, challenges of racism, but there's a lot of positive aspects to our racial identities, that children should be grounded in and should understand, and for white racial identities, understanding their privilege and how they can leverage that in order to create a more just and equal world. And so, you know, it's it's definitely a powerful, powerful lens and conversation to look at. Carmen, you mentioned kind of what a rich home and black internal environment could look like. I'm curious to know because we have a lot of our listeners, our parents and educators, when we work with educators, and we're, you know, our organization bilingual generation is talking about bilingualism and when we talk about black language, as another language as a legitimate language that should be honored and celebrated. Educators are sometimes surprised, because they are sometimes taught that that language is incorrect or an inferior form of English. And so I'm curious to know like, if you work with K 12 educators, what's your message to them around black language and how that how that intersects with their work with black students and families with

Carmen Kynard our work with you know, across the board, helping people understand this, the deeply the deep history and the deep philosophy that is black language and questioning, questioning people even just questioning language about what's right, what's wrong, proper, slang, school, academic, all of these kinds of I mean, all these kinds of modes of segregation and Jim Crow segregation, sort of getting people to think about that, particularly, and, you know, it's a hard conversation because people have to look at how they themselves have internalized white supremacy and how they're promoting it and sometimes educators who have committed themselves to brown black children don't want to hear the ways that they have also internalized white supremacy. And there's a way that you can be racist and be incredibly anti black. If you just talk about language, as if you aren't talking about black bodies and black people. And so there's a kind of comfort that happens there and taking back some of that comfort. But there's also and this is also happening in the context of a culture that is always heavily appropriating like language, it's everywhere, you know, the T shirts that you have, it's just everywhere constantly appropriating it. And so this message of it makes you on board with a message that black language is totally for the purposes of white consumption in the sense of white people making money off of it. And so just kind of like having to interject there. And giving people tools to understand what black language actually is, what it does, how it does what it does. And some of the things that they're telling young people are incorrect, have been in existence for hundreds of years. So Black people are not talking this way and using these kinds of grammatical constructs with these kinds of metaphors. Or these kinds of styles, because they can't do something else. And why should any Why should black children believe you when you tell them that to give up all of that, that they're going to somehow gain some some some kind of corner in this white supremacist world that will never be given to them and you're always gonna have to fight for so I mean, some of this is like it's also a real is also getting people to think more about how you talk to people, how you talk to young people, particularly about white supremacy in deeper ways. Like, I remember when I used to teach remedial classes, I started teaching college writing, we do classes, a great deal that represent a black college and I used to tell my black students all the time there and they were in remedial classes and they were there was a lot at stake if they didn't pass this the Summer Bridge Program. So these remedial classes, they couldn't take credit bearing courses. And so all of their financial aid scholarships, tuition money would be wrapped up in courses that aren't going to count for them. And so one of the things I will say to them You know, is if grammar was the only thing black people had to worry about in this world, we will be all right we will be alright because that is not some hurdle. So do not let white schools tell you that will convince you that or that if you mimic these kinds of white colds, that somehow the pearly gates are going to open for you because they are not. So those kinds of those are very real conversations we have to but that takes a certain kind of analysis of schooling of institutions of whiteness, of anti blackness that people need to have. I think what I get from parents and educators of color the most is a real is a real fear of their children's stigma, stigmatization and wanting to help them acquire some kind of armor. And so a standardized white language is going to do that. People talk from a real place of pain from their own narratives around making sure young people know this, if you talk this way, if you do this, this is what's going to happen to you in the white world. And again, like my concern with some of that for parents teachers and children, is this sort of pedagogy is this teaching model, where we give young people of color this message that their bodies are building to this eternal Hill, and there's no joy in that, like you are gym, growing your parenting your gym, growing your classrooms, in ways I don't think you intend How can we turn that into a space of joy that acknowledges white supremacy, it's very much a punishment discourse is a carceral discourse. I think a lot of parents and educators have to undo their own sort of inner carcere ality around blackness, that they need to confront. That's going to be some deeply painful work also, but I think that the it's just so harsh and so punishing, the way people present their heritage language to young people, you know, in terms of what the dangers are, and it's a lie that taking that away, and giving something else is going to give them this coat of armor and it's rules that don't apply really to why people who aren't speaking and writing and the standardized language that like, you know, they're getting stereotyped as being as being you know, just innate to them. Wow,

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides I'm just processing all of all of that because it it hits. It's really powerful. And I'm wondering Carmen like if the narrative started to shift in a really big way. Where we could honor celebrate, not only black language, but like the heritage languages of of all of our people and our students and children, like, you know, what would that world look like? Like, what what could we gain from that vision?

Carmen Kynard I think it would be a fuller humanity. It's just anti human. To imagine that we only use one language one language is is more than than another or that one code of a language is more than another and like the fact that you have to commit so much violence, so much imperialism, and so much colonization, to get that message out. To tell you that it is not that we don't want to be so sort of like myopic as to say, you know, if we were truly just a multilingual humanity, we wouldn't have colonization and imperialism is going to take a lot to counter to counter that. As a mentality as a structure, all of these kinds of things. It has to do with achieving a fuller humanity. And achieving a world a decolonize world and, you know, a kind of world that none of us makes me have experienced. And you know, when you think about other, you know, outside of the United States outside of the global north, how many languages people speak, just fluently and not just fluently, but with the fluidity and have this imposition of, I mean, they also can do the sort of European colonial languages also because because they have to, but that that is so normative, and most of the world tells us something, and you know, and just the sort of the unnatural and and violent ways that we have to say that that is a language inferiority, that that is language struggle, versus sort of being like super language users is again, you know, like so you think about the young people or, or those adults who come to the United States and are marked as people who struggle with language and when the exact opposite is true,

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides completely. They're labeled English language learners instead of multilingual learners. Like, come on. monolingualism

Carmen Kynard isn't even isn't even healthy for your brain. I mean, you know, even when you look at sort of instances of Alzheimer's and things like that with the way that people are beginning to connect, like where do we see this where don't we, I mean, like, it's just not even. It's not fully utilizing your human capacity, I would say, right,

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides right. Well, yeah, also sounds like maybe our bodies are telling us something, too, in terms of reclaiming our humanity and tapping into that, and I appreciate you naming what it could look like. Because though we sit in these systems of oppression, we have the power to reimagine to change like you said, sit in our own individual agency and realize, you know, how we have been colonized and how we may be passing that on and the ways in which we can shift that to create a better future. So I mean, permanent has been an incredible honor to talk to you I'm so grateful that you were able to come onto our podcast to share your work your life, your thoughts around this very important topic. As we sign off for this episode. I'd love to know what is bringing you joy these days.

Carmen Kynard What is bringing me joy, candles, candles. Um, you know, sort of trying to mimic sitting by the fire I was I will also say like, reading young adult literature, watching what young people do even on tick tock, all of this, you know, I will say the the language brings me joy, because it's just it's funny. You can cry and laugh and learn at the same time. Imagine different worlds, all of that stuff that you know, young people live in, in their language as they want to live in it does for me. So that's bringing me a lot of joy these days. Thank

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides you for sharing that joy with us. Where can people find you on the internet? Where can they find more information about the work that you're doing?

Carmen Kynard I'm on Instagram. I don't know. I mostly alert her fairly post a lot. In that kind of way. I still blog every now and then usually about something that I'm pissed off about. And I just work through and write through and figure it out. I'm still I'm still blogging, and still trying to understand myself as a sort of academic and researcher, but as a writer, so doing that kind of work also. So yeah, so I think on the blog, you can find me on a blog, usually giving talks here and there at different places, that kind of thing, and on Instagram, and you can also have all of the courses that I teach I have sort of a websites that I have created. There's a so this semester I'm doing a class around hip hop, hip hop is language and rhetoric. And that's going to be on a it's going to happen off a website called funkified. So you can see what my students are up to what kind of things they're doing. They're kind of the kind of fun we're going to try to have to get this semester.

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides Thank you so much.

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides Thank you so much for tuning in today! If you liked what you heard, take a minute to share this podcast with a friend or colleague. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review on your favorite podcast platform. Your ratings and reviews help us keep the podcast lights on! We can’t do this without your support. Every subscription, share, follow, download, and review makes a big difference and helps others find our show. Also, we love hearing from you! Tell us what you think of the podcast. Email us at hello@bilingualgeneration.com. You can also slide into our DMs on Instagram, @talkingtograndma. If you are interested in learning more about our workshops and curricular tools for schools serving multilingual and emerging multilingual students, visit our website at www.bilingualgeneration.com or write us at hello@bilingualgeneration.com Talking to Grandma is owned by Bilingual Generation. Rebecca De Leon is our editor and producer. The artwork for Talking to Grandma was created by Nansi Guevara. And I’m your host, Dr. Veronica Benavides. See you next episode!