Category Archives: Puerto Rican

September 29, 2012 · 10:24 am

Conquistadora by Esmeralda Santiago

I think I must have been a Boricua in a former life. I can’t seem to stay away too long from La Isla del Encanto (especially my favorite Isla Culebrita), and I get the fiercest cravings for Bebo’s and mofongo (it’s all about a full belly). So how thrilled was I to get an invitation to visit a friend’s book club to discuss Conquistadora, an epic historical novel set in Puerto Rico. Alas, alas, if I tell her fellow Boricuas what I really think, it’s likely they will never invite me back … so the truth might just have to stay here.

As a girl growing up in 18th-century Spain, Ana Larragoity Cubillas – a señorita de buena familia (you’ll hear that moniker often!) – discovers the journals of an ancestor who was one of the first visitors two centuries prior to Puerto Rico when it was still called Borínquen. Ana’s adventurous aspirations come to fruition when she marries into a family that has inherited considerable holdings in Puerto Rico. Ana, her husband Rámon, his twin brother Inocente, plan to tame the sugar plantation that they name Hacienda los Gamelos (yes, House of the Twins). Ana’s romantic notions of wild island life are hardly what her reality turns out to be, and yet nothing will make her give up the challenge to achieve her Hacienda dreams – not murder, not motherhood, not widowhood, not epidemic deaths, not betrayal after betrayal.

Slavery, colonialism, the evolving role of women, gender power plays – such important storytelling potential quickly sinks into messy, missed opportunity. The narrative, with its telenovela twists and turns, relies heavily on eye-rolling moments to sustain a sort of train-wreck momentum: Ana’s furtive premarital couplings with her convent schoolfriend (a distant relative of the twins) who gets relegated to saintly spinsterhood most of her life, the ménage-à-trois-marriage Ana endures with both twins, too many white male characters’ forcible production of a shocking supply of hapa slave offspring.

Beyond the narrative, most characters prove to be predictable one-note caricatures: driven Ana, weakling twins, wallflower Elena, wannabe Severo, hysterical Lenore, doting Eugenio, spoiled Miguel. The few moments of grace belong to the long-suffering – dare I say – noble slaves: Olivia who dreams of telling her future children her whole life story because she never even learned her own mother’s name, José who lovingly immortalizes the cholera-dead into a piece of beautiful mahogany because all that is left of his loved ones are scattered ashes. As the book ends with Ana barely in middle-age, I fear a sequel must be in the works.

Conquistadora is not my first Esmeralda Santiago title: her debut, a resonating memoir, When I Was Puerto Rican, was definitely my favorite; its sequel, Almost a Woman, proved disappointing, which was my excuse for not picking up the next sequel, The Turkish Lover; her predictable novel America’s Dream remains unfinished; and now her latest might have to be my last. I confess the only reason I made it to the end had to do with my belly (did I not mention cravings?). Yes, really – the friend who so graciously invited me to meet her Boricuas, promised to reward me with Pastelon de Amarillos. I admit it: I will read (almost anything) for amazing food! After alternating between the 432-page book and the almost 18-hour audible version narrated by a subdued Santiago herself, I can only hope I’ve earned tomorrow night’s dinner.

Readers: Adults

Published: 2012

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Fiction, Carribbean American, Latino/a, Puerto Rican

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September 25, 2012 · 9:33 am

We the Animals by Justin Torres

As this debut novel is all of 125 pages (in hardcover), you have little excuse not to read it in a single sitting … not that you’ll want to be interrupted anyway. When it’s finished, you’ll be wishing for more.

That greed subliminally kicks in on page 1, with the first chapter, “We Wanted More.” Three young brothers – the youngest being the unnamed ‘I’-narrator – “… were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more.” Their parents are not much older – their white mother, eight months pregnant, was just 14 when she convinced their 16-year-old Puerto Rican father “to do the right thing, which was to take her on a bus to Texas [from Brooklyn] and marry her.” Both are ninth-grade drop-outs, and while Ma was still in her “teenage years,” the couple settled somewhere upstate from Brooklyn, had three sons but rarely enough food, money, work, sleep, patience, even love. Ma and Paps, too, must have wanted more.

Ma works the graveyard shift at the local brewery and gets night and day confused. Paps works less predictably, cooks meals from his childhood, and tries to teach his hapa boys (“‘Mutts … You ain’t white and you ain’t Puerto Rican’”) to mamba – their “heritage” – just as he learned growing up in Spanish Harlem. Their relationship is volatile, with Paps disappearing, Ma mourning, Paps beating, Ma escaping. And yet, in between are lulls of humor and tenderness, smashing tomatoes in the kitchen, playing hide-and-seek in the close-curtained bathtub.

For years, the boys – a single three-headed entity called ‘we’ – explore, watch, tiptoe, laugh, avoid, imitate, learn. Their paths toward adulthood eventually causes shifts, and too soon ‘we’ splits into ‘they’ and ‘I/my’: “They smelled my difference … They believed I would know a world larger than their own. They hated me for my good grades, for my white ways. All at once they were disgusted, and jealous, and deeply protective, and deeply proud.”

Even as Justin Torres‘ coming-of-age narration ends with wrenching revelations and consequences, the final blow is buried in the acknowledgements (spoiler alert!): “Extra special thanks to Laura Iodice, my high school English teacher, who brought me books when I was hospitalized …” In the midst of trying to reclaim some calm at story’s end, you realize that some (most? how much?) of this searing, blinding title must be autobiographical in spite of its ‘novel’-label, and the heart can’t help but splinter for the young man whose desperate mother begged him to always stay her baby boy.

Reading Animals is reminiscent of discovering Julie Otsuka‘s When the Emperor Was Divine: both are powerful debut novels with a brevity that belies the dense intensity captured within the elliptical, careful, just-enough prose; both have breath-snatching endings. Interestingly enough, when you pull up Animals on Amazon, it’s paired with Otsuka’s 2011 National Book Award Finalist, 2012 PEN/Faulkner-winning The Buddha in the Attic, another spare gem. Sure, I’m probably reaching, but that strikes me as a sign of amazing things to come for Torres’s sophomore effort. Humor me, and mark my words …

Tidbit: Serendipity! Justin Torres is one of the National Book Foundation‘s oh so prestigious “5 Under 35” for 2012 (announced September 27, 2012 – yipppeee and whoo hoooo!). His book was chosen by the inimitable Jessica Hagedorn. Another of the 2012 judges was actually Julie Otsuka (!), who chose Claire Vaye Watkins’ Battleborn. Might have to read that, too!

Readers: Adult

Published: 2011

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, Hapa, Latino/a, Puerto Rican

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September 21, 2012 · 9:40 am

The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano by Sonia Manzano

Not to confuse anyone, but I have to start with p. 177 because that’s where you’ll find a reference to “that cool new show Sesame Street” (which debuted 1969), because first-time novelist Sonia Manzano has been playing Sesame Street‘s Maria for the last 30+ years! While the title says Evelyn Serrano, the book’s revolutionary events are directly inspired by Manzano’s own experiences, as well as real-life newspaper headlines. Manzano even borrowed her protagonist’s name from her own grandmother, Guadalupe Serrano Manzano, and her cousin Evelyn.

Just so we’re clear now: Sonia is not Maria, but she is Evelyn although not her cousin Evelyn. Got that?

Rosa María Evelyn del Carmen Serrano announces on her 14th birthday she’s dropping ‘Rosa’ for ‘Evelyn’ – “the least Puerto Rican-sounding name I could have” – because “El Barrio, Spanish Harlem, U.S.A., did not need another Rosa, María, or Carmen.” Summer 1969 is hot, and Evelyn has been released from working in her parents’ stifling bodega to get her first job at the Third Avenue five-and-dime.

She comes home one day to find she’s been displaced from her bedroom by a flamboyant grandmother she’s never met before, newly arrived from Puerto Rico. Abuela, Evelyn quickly realizes, is nothing like her subservient, long-suffering Mami. At first, the three generations of women hardly get along: Mami still resents Abuela for neglecting her most of her life, Abuela can’t understand why Mami doesn’t have a political bone in her body, and Evelyn just wants their bickering to stop.

Then the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican activist group, takes over the neighborhood streets with brooms, piling up the garbage that the city sanitation department seems to have forgotten and eventually setting it ablaze. They move from the streets to a local church, demanding to set up a free food program, offer clothing, and even health services for their struggling immigrant community. Abuela eagerly joins the protesters. Evelyn gets swept up in their change-making energy, gaining new pride in her Puerto Rican culture and history. Even Mami gets distantly involved, at first only to ensure Evelyn’s safety … but stays long enough to realize she can make her own contributions.

The tumultuous Puerto Rican history – on both islands, in the Caribbean and on Manhattan – certainly makes for an exciting read; as a novel, however, that excitement glosses over occasional narrative gaps, especially the lack of any mention of the new school year, since the story unfolds between summer to the following winter. As for characters, stepfather Pops’ backstory seems necessary to balance knowing that Evelyn’s birthfather died while Mami was still pregnant, and smooth-talking Wilfredo’s sudden redemption feels rather forced.

What Revolution might lack in continuity and literary finesse most likely won’t keep readers turning the pages. While Evelyn’s name graces the cover, Abuela’s larger-than-life presence, her buried memories, her emotionally complicated struggles, are what spark and inspire the evolution that becomes Evelyn’s revolution.

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2012

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Filed under ..Middle Grade Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, Caribbean, Carribbean American, Puerto Rican

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July 24, 2010 · 8:28 am

Welcome to My Neighborhood: A Barrio A•B•C by Quiara Alegría Hudes, illustrated by Shino Arihara

“A is for abuela. And abandoned car,” begins an adventurous afternoon for two friends – one Latina, the other Asian Pacific American – as they explore the familiar yet unique streets and corners of the little girl’s neighborhood.

From the Chino-Latino corner store to the fire hydrant “spraying summer rain,” to los jíbaros “jamming in the jungle of concrete,” to the muralistas “making murals of island vistas,” to all the Spanish words “I somehow still forget,” to a “universe of maple roots and sidewalk cracks,” this Neighborhood is a realistic portrayal of both the beauty and challenges of growing up amidst major city streets.

This is not your fantastical, all-shiny, too-perfect kiddie book: Mixed in with the city’s ever-changing vibrancy are also the broken bottles, plastic crate hoops, and noisy neighbors. Such reminders definitely give this book an advantage over too many fluffy bunnies and make-believe castles … not that there’s anything wrong with bunnies or castles, of course! We all need to dream … but Neighborhood‘s kiddie-friendly reminders of the more-real world also make for great reading moments, as well.

Author Quiara Alegría Hudes, by the way, also penned the Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights – that lyrical talent is certainly in evidence here in her picture book debut. Shino Arihara‘s illustrations infuse Hudes’ words with joyful, unstoppable movement … check out the first spread alone, as the young boy’s parents lovingly look on at their son, his little body in quick motion running toward his smiling, waving, laughing friend as she is dashing out her front door, atop two concrete steps, joyous in her greeting. Friendship doesn’t get better than that!

Readers: Children

Published: 2010

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Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Fiction, Japanese American, Latino/a, Puerto Rican

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