ABSTRACT
The author adopts Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” to narrate her idolization of Brazilian identity and Portuguese language embodied by an object of romantic interest. She thus narrates the process of desiring the other. However, many conditions lead to an alienation from the desired identity and disenchantment in becoming the other. She eventually resolves not to escape her identity but to embrace a translingual identity that is comfortable in appropriating diverse languages and identities in her own terms. She concludes that “a translingual identity is one made up of multiple, moving layers, and it is paradoxically most harmonious and effective when it is rooted. That is, when the deepest layer, the bedrock of the mermaid’s ‘immortal soul,’ is recognized and embraced.”
