Zoe Saldana doesn’t just want to raise multicultural children, she feels a deep need to.
The 38-year-old actress discussed why it was so important that she and her husband pass on their roots to their sons in her latest YouTube episode of “Rosé Roundtable with Zoe Saldana.”
Saldana and her husband, Italian artist Marco Perego, welcomed their twin boys, Cy Aridio and Bowie Ezio, in November 2014. Since then, she’s realized how difficult it is to keep the promise she made with her sisters to speak in Spanish with her children.
“We didn’t realize that when we all address each other, we’re actually talking in the language that feels most comfortable, most familiar to us, which is English,” Saldana said, adding that while growing up, Spanish was used mainly while talking with her elders.
The star says the realization has made her more “conscious” about how she plans to pass on her native tongue to her children, which includes not using Spanish while correcting them.
But for Saldana, raising multicultural children is about a lot more than just passing on the language.
“My husband is an immigrant,” Saldana said. “I’m a first-generation [immigrant]. It is a necessity for us to raise our children with our roots so that they can communicate with their grandparents but also so they can create some kind of empathy for human beings that do no look like them and do not sound like them and do not smell like them.”
Well said, Zoe.
Watch the full episode on “Being American” above.
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