“You are shamed for speaking it or for not speaking it good enough”

This chapter explores the conflictual dynamics behind one of the several thematic contents, namely the paradoxical status of the Spanish language within the Latino community in the US that have been found to make up the matrix upon which the Latino identity is constructed. It aims to help fill in the gap by facilitating a more nuanced understanding of the ethnic and racialised processes involved in the reaction to and treatment of the use of Spanish in the US and how the crucially impact Latinos of different generations regarding their self-perceptions of in/out groupness. The chapter looks at comments posted in response to Noel Quinones’s poem about language attrition. However, despite the growing proportion of non-Spanish-speaking Latinos in the US, the language issue is still thorny for those who find their identities or Latinidad questioned over not being able to speak Spanish.