“My father never stopped talking about la plaza de Lares. It had the only two details of Puerto Rican history he thought important. First, there was the church, a colonial Catholic relic anchoring the plaza at one end. Then, in front of it, a monument commemorated El Grito de Lares, an ill‑fated nineteenth‑century insurrection against Spanish rule. I’d never actually seen the plaza. In their faraway Chicago projects, papi and mami never rubbed enough chavos together to take us back to their homeland before they died. Yet here I was, after an overnight sail from the Dominican Republic with three prep school buddies, serving as their guide to Puerto Rico, about which my older sister, Aida, used to say, If that stupid Lares was so frickin nice, why papi and mami leave it then?”
That is the beginning of my short story “The Cry of Lares.” You may read the rest of it at the following link:
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6 comments:
Off to continue reading now!
Me too
Loved it!
Thank you, Ann and Sheila, for sharing my writing journey.
It is a very rich and passionate tale. You eschew all cliches, which lurk in the vicinity when writing about your "old folks' country". I can picture my two children in a couple of decades' time writing a similar short story. I hope they have the same good quality yours has.
Greetings from London.
Thank you, Cuban in London, I hope you like your children's short story, too.
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