There’s no denying that the large Hispanic population in America is growing larger. This is reflected in the increasing number of debates about immigration law and making English the official language of the United States. While I am not particularly versed about the arguments either for or against these causes, the fact remains that America is browning and one is almost as likely to run into somebody who speaks only Spanish on the street as they are to run into somebody who speaks only English. That’s the reality we live in. Looking at a lot of the news stories and considering what people are focusing on, it would appear that everybody in the United States who speak Spanish are all from Mexico. However, there are sizeable populations who have immigrated from other countries. The books reviewed in this collection are all memoirs. One auther immigrated from Puerto Rico and one auther was the child of Puerto Rican immigrants. The other three authers all immigrated from Cuba, two shortly after the Cuban Revolution and one during the Mariel boatlift.
The reason I chose these two countries is because of the unique relationship that the United States has with them. Puerto Rico has been a commonwealth of the United States since the Spanish American War. This is ideal for the United States because they are able to keep a military base there. What’s uncertain is whether it’s ideal for the people of Puerto Rico. The United States has maintained an embargo against Cuba since shortly after the Cuban Revolution. With a few exceptions, the United States and Cuba do not have a diplomatic relationship. Despite this, Cubans have come to the United States in several waves since the revolution which results in many broken families in that many Miami Cubans still have family on the island.
In short, while it is true that Mexico has had a huge impact nearly all aspects of American life, it is not the only Hispanic population that has changed the fabric of the United States. Mexicans aren’t the only people who have come to the United States in pursuit of the American Dream. These books, while discussed in no particular order, are all the voices of Puerto Ricans and Cuban Americans. These voices are powerful and should be heard.
Santiago, E. (1993). When I Was Puerto Rican. New York, Vintage Books.
This book is a coming of age story about Esmeralda “Negi” Santiago. Born in Puerto Rico, Negi moved with her family from the country to the city and back again several times before finally moving to New York City with her mother and several of her younger siblings at the age of thirteen. At the start of her story she is the eldest of three. By the time that she graduates high school, Negi is the eldest of eleven children. After moving to New York, she auditioned and was accepted to New York City’s Performing Arts High School. Eventually, Negi attended Harvard University on full scholarship. When I Was Puerto Rican is her first book.
This rich, autobiographical book begins when Negi and her family first move to Macún when she was four years old. The memories recounted, even those from such a young age, are visceral and real. When she first moved to Macún Negi touched one of the metal rectangular sheets that were the walls of her house and burned her hand. She remembers her hand was red for the rest of the day and she was unable to suck her thumb that night.
She recounts when she first encountered Americans in her town. Experts from the United States and San Juan gathered the town together to teach the people of her barrio proper nutrition and hygiene. She remembers asking her Papi what a gringo was and being chastised for using that word. She remembers the colorful food pyramid that showed what foods should be consumed and that none of those foods were readily available in Puerto Rico. She remembers going to the centro comunal before school after this meeting to eat breakfast, which was often the tasteless huevos Americanos that “smelled like the cardboard covers of our primers, salty, dry, fibrous, but not as satisfyingly chewy” (76).
At the age of thirteen, Negi, her mother and three of her younger siblings all moved to Brooklyn. When she moved there, it was common for students from Puerto Rico to start one grade lower than they were at their home school because they often didn’t speak English. In her broken English she talked them into letting her stay in eighth grade instead of downgrading her to seventh grade. She did this only to find out she was put in the special education class at the eighth grade level. The end of this memoir is when Negi meets with her mentor from her years at New York City’s Performing Arts High School as she is about to graduate from Harvard.
This memoir is rich with details and shows with startling clarity what it is like to grow up in a small island town only to move to one of the largest cities in the world. The details about going to school in New York, translating for her mother, and several other women, at the welfare office are stark. It is a fresh perspective on what it is like to come of age in a country that isn’t your own and speaking a language that isn’t your own.
Thomas, P. (1967). Down These Mean Streets. New York, Vintage Books.
Piri Thomas grew up on the mean streets of El Barrio, or Spanish Harlem, during the Great Depression. A son of Puerto Rican immigrants, he had a difficult time adjusting himself to the black and white America where everybody is either black or white. The fact that he’s Puerto Rican makes no difference in the minds of those he meets, the fact that his skin is black is what counts. As far as the larger society is concerned he is African American, not Latino. His struggle for survival and, more importantly, identity is one that resounds with many people.
The streets of Spanish Harlem are, as the title of this books suggests, not kind. Piri lived the life of the streets. At a young age he learned that to survive one had to fight. So he fought, and eventually fought his way into a gang. He did drugs and he solved any problems he encountered with his fists.
This reliance on violence eventually cost Piri his freedom, and nearly his life. During his early twenties Piri participated in an armed robbery during which he got injured. After spending some time in Belleview Hospital he was transferred to Sing Sing prison to serve out his sentence for the armed robbery.
While in prison, somebody suggested to him that he should write. Piri didn’t take that suggestion to heart for several years, but he did eventually. He also earned his high school diploma and converted to Islam. While he didn’t stay a muslim after getting released from prison, many of the lessons stayed with him throughout his life.
This memoir is about the struggle that Piri, and many other people, went through in order to survive. By no means are Piri’s experiences as an adolescent unique. Through his eyes, the rest of the world can see, feel, and live what it feels like to grow up Afro-Latino in a tough neighborhood. Through his eyes, people can see how difficult it really is to reconcile conflicting identities and still survive.
Veciana-Suarez, A. (2000). Birthday Parties in Heaven: Thoughts on Love, Life, Grief, and Other Matters of the Heart. New York, Penguin Group.
Ana Veciana-Suarez is a Cuban immigrant who immigrated with her parents and younger siblings in 1962, only four years after the Cuban revolution. This book is a collection of essays about her experience as a mother, daughter, wife and widow. Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes humorous, all these essays are startlingly honest and convey a message about the human heart.
Like many people, Ana has a complicated relationship with her mother. Her mother was the disciplinarian, the one who kept her and her sisters in line. Sometimes her mother hit them to punish them. Some things that she said, particularly about their looks, were more painful than being hit and the wounds lasted longer. But her mother also sat up with her all night when she was sick. Her mother insisted that Veciana-Suarez could do anything. So she wonders, how does one reconcile a woman who in one breath is criticizing her daughter’s choice of hairstyle and in next is swearing her daughter can accomplish anything?
In one essay, she discusses the debilitating grief she felt when her husband died suddenly of a heart attack. She described the days, weeks, months, seasons and years of grief, of crying. She described the jealousy she felt for their five children, who cruelly had their father taken away. But then she described how she realized that she was starting to live again. She described walking in the grocery store and noticing the foods and snacks that her husband preferred, but no longer reaching for them. She has lived being compared, either by herself or by her children, to Saint Dad.
The first essay describes her family’s search for a home after leaving Cuba. At first her parents wanted to return. Her father was an activist constantly working to overthrow Fidel Castro. She remembers her first Christmas tree, and realizing that they didn’t have one earlier not due to the lack of money, but because her parents still hoped to return to the island. So a question that Veciana-Suarez asked was “when did exile become home?” (7). This is a question that still has no definitive answer.
In these startling honest reflections on life and family are the experiences that everybody can have, regardless of skin color, ethnic background and religion. These are the experiences that make a life and they are told in a way that is intuitive and real.
Anders, G. (2007). Men May Come and Men May Go But I’ve Still Got My Little Pink Raincoat: Life and Love In and Out of my Wardrobe. New York, HarperCollins.
Gigi Anders is a Jewish-Cuban immigrant who came to the United States shortly after the Cuban Revolution. This book is about her trials and tribulations while dating and shopping. She has a knack for picking out the right clothing and accessories, but the wrong men. She has tried to win men over with a fabulous new pink raincoat, or a gorgeous new pair of earrings, but to no avail. Essentially, Gigi Anders is the Latina Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City.
The pink raincoat was to try to get her on again, off again boyfriend of four years to propose to her. It was the perfect shade of pink, and basically the definition of fabulous. Of course, every other women who saw it in the magazine that Anders did thought so as well. Anders had to call all over the United States and eventually found one. She wore it for the first time around the boyfriend, and found out that he was color blind and didn’t even notice it was pink.
The next article of clothing that was aiming to please was peach colored lingerie. They were purchased for her by her dermatologist, who was in the process of seperating from his wife. After their first date, during which he came to her place with dinner, he gave her the money to purchase the peach colored lingerie. The next time she saw him she wore the lingerie, only to find out that he had been diagnosed with cancer and was going back to his wife. She never wore it again.
Another failed relationship was with an Argentinian who her friend set her up with, claiming that he was oro puro, or pure gold. It started out really well with him. He was successful and thought that she was beautiful. He took her on great dates where they both really enjoyed himself. Then he confessed. He was Latino, which he felt was difficult enough, but he was also gay. He wanted to marry Anders so that he could get green card.
Basically, as Anders herself says, she doesn’t understand men and the feeling is mutual. However, they give her a lot of material and she breezes through the various outfits and men in her life with wit and a sense of humor that can and should inspire anybody.
Ojito, M. (2005). Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus. New York, The Penguin Press.
On a morning in 1980 the Cuban police showed up at Mirta Ojito’s apartment and asked her mother if they were ready to abandon their country. She was sixteen years old and had been waiting for this moment with her parents and younger sister for years. They were given very little time to gather the family together and then they embarked on what was to become the Mariel boatlift.
The Mariel boatlift was several months in the making. One of the events that led to Fidel Castro’s decision to allow the Cuban exodus to occur was when many people who had already emigrated from Cuba came back to visit family members. They brought gifts and money and told stories of their lives abroad. Another event was when a bus crashed into the Peruvian embassy in Havana and was then literally flooded with Cubans trying to seek asylum. This created a public relations nightmare for Castro who eventually permitted any Cuban who meets specific criteria to leave. Mirta and her family were able to leave because her uncle came and claimed them.
While she didn’t always want to leave the country of her birth, Mirta grew up knowing that she would eventually leave it. Her father always wanted to leave as he never supported the revolution or Fidel Castro. She doesn’t know when she decided she wanted to leave. Perhaps it was when she saw her school records and found out that the government knew more about her than she realized. Perhaps it was when her teacher started making fun of her because she still went to church, which was not accepted in Cuba at the time. Perhaps it was when she found out about all the politcial prisoners. Regardless, by the time they were all able to leave, the desire to leave Cuba had become an obsession.
This memoir tells not only the personal story of Mirta and her family, but it also tells of some of the wider political events that occurred leading up to the Mariel boatlift. She had interviewed people, usually getting more than one person to tell her how a particular event happened. So interwoven between her own memories are the memories of Hectór Sanyustiz, Ernesto Pinto, Napoleón Vilaboa and Mike Howell, her real-life heroes. Hectór Sanyustiz drove the bus through the gates of the Peruvian embassy in search of asylum. Ernesto Pinto wouldn’t let the Cuban government just reclaim those that flooded the Peruvian embassy to send them to prison. Napoleón Vilaboa was one of the first to go back to Cuba in order to bring more people to the United States, to unite more families. Mike Howell was the captain of the boat, the Mañana, that took Mirta and her family from the Port of Mariel to Florida without asking for any compensation. While these experiences are the experiences of Mirta, they are still part of her story.
This memoir brings the experience of living under a repressive regime to life in a unique way. Through the experiences of sixteen year-old Mirta, the world is able to see that not everybody who came to the United States during this mass exodus were criminals and mentally ill people. Some of them were people who were just looking for a better life, some of them were people very similar to caucasions who were born and raised in the United States. Their past experiences were different, but their dreams were the same. They wanted a better life for themselves and more opportunities for their children.
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