Ilan Stavans

Latinos are learning English. That doesn't mean that they should sacrifice their original language or that they should give up this in-betweeness that is Spanglish.

At its core, the United States is grateful, warm-hearted, full of unexpected twists and turns - not a cold and bullying prison - it's a place of infinite jest.

Don Quixote' is a very political book that has been used by diplomats, politicians, guerrilla fighters, to inspire people, to convince them that they themselves can become quixotic. George Washington had a copy of the book on his desk when signing the U.S. Constitution.

In 2009, I edited, under the aegis of the Library of America, an anthology called 'Becoming Americans: Immigrants Tell Their Stories from Jamestown to Today.' It featured immigrants from different backgrounds, from black slaves like Phillis Wheatley to Yiddish-language speakers like Henry Roth.

How many different works of art have been inspired by 'Don Quixote?' Thousands. Most people enter the novel, for better or worse, through the musical the 'Man Of La Mancha.'

Disinterring famous people has become a kind of sport in the Hispanic world. Before Cervantes, it happened to Evita, Che Guevara, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Pablo Neruda.

Spanglish is the encounter: perhaps the word is marriage or divorce of English and Spanish, but also of Anglo and Hispanic civilizations - not only in the United States but in the entire continent and, perhaps, also in Spain.

Cervantes married in 1584, when he was thirty-seven and Catalina was nineteen. The marriage lasted thirty years, but Cervantes may have spent only about half of them with his wife.

I have always considered it a beautiful metaphor that Cervantes had no fixed address in Spain. He is thus everywhere and nowhere. There are a number of sites connected with his life, but none attract hordes of travellers the way Stratford-upon-Avon and the Globe Theatre in London draw Shakespeare aficionados.

Two prominent terms, 'Latino' and 'Hispanic,' refer to people living in the United States who have roots in Latin America, Spain, Mexico, South America, or Spanish-speaking Caribbean countries.

The running joke about the Premio Cervantes, the most coveted literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world, which was established by Spain's Ministry of Culture in 1976, is that Cervantes himself wouldn't have received it. This is because he was, in his heart, the most anti-Spanish of Spanish writers.

There are varieties of Spanglish. There's Spanglish spoken by Cuban Americans in Miami called cubonics is different from Mexican American Spanglish, but thanks to the Internet, thanks to radio and television, thanks to what is happening in the classrooms, in the streets in the restaurants, we are finding a middle ground.