El Apellido Nicolas Guillen English Translation ~repack~ ✅

: The speaker reflects on how his true family name was lost during the transatlantic slave trade. Transculturation

The most devastating images in the poem are the grandparents. They are "mute" because they were violently stripped of their language. When Guillén writes that their "tongues rotted in their mouths," he is referencing the linguistic genocide of enslaved Africans. They could not pass on their tribal surnames because they were forbidden to speak their native tongues (Lucumí, Kikongo, etc.). el apellido nicolas guillen english translation