We Speak Bilingual - Hablamos Bilingüe

In English
Recently, my cousin posted a Facebook link to the 1940 U.S. Census report, featuring our grandparents and parents then living in Puerto Rico. The response from the generation which followed them was remarkable because of the language in which each person chose to comment. 

The thread started in Spanish. That cousin grew up in the Dominican Republic. I responded in Spanish. In my childhood, that was the only language we spoke at home, though we lived near Chicago. 

Then, another of my cousins responded in English, noting that she could read and understand everything written in Spanish, but she felt most comfortable writing in English.

The thread became only English for a while. Then the original commenter said her situation was exactly the reverse. She could understand everything written in English, but felt most comfortable writing in Spanish.

From that point forward, the thread went back and forth between Spanish and English. I wrote in both languages, depending on which seemed best for expressing what I wanted to say.

In so doing, I represent another variant, someone with a large facility in both languages. I did not speak English until I attended primary school. From that moment on, I lived parallel lives in which, at home and in church, I only spoke Spanish; at school, only English. All of my formal education was conducted in English.

At home, however, I was receiving another education, which despite being less formal was equally intensive. I was involved in classes dedicated to biblical study. I also participated in daily religious services. In addition, my father, who was a poet and a minister, maintained a library containing Hispanic literature, works that my classes in English largely ignored.

Despite this rich orientation in both languages, however, I have to admit that, due to my residence in the United States, English is the language in which I feel more capable and comfortable. 

In our Facebook discussion, not all of my cousins shared my ease with both languages. Nevertheless, regardless of the language used, we all understood each other. The connection felt real.

Is this flexible language capability representative only of a transitional generation among Latinos living in the US? Will the next generation use and understand only one language? What will that mean culturally for Latinos? How will our literature, our politics, our view of the world be affected?

No sé, and I don’t know.

***

En Español
Recientemente, mi prima publicó un link en Facebook, un enlace con el censo del 1940, en el cual figuraban nuestros abuelos y tíos.  Las respuestas de la generación siguiente fueron notables por el idioma en el que cada persona decidió comentar.

El hilo de la conversación comenzó en español. Esa prima se crió en la República Dominicana.  Yo respondí en español. En mi niñez, era el único idioma que hablábamos en casa, a pesar de que vivíamos cerca de Chicago.

Luego, otra de mis primas respondió en inglés, explicando  que  podía leer y comprender todo lo escrito en español, pero que se sentía más cómoda escribiendo en inglés.

Seguimos en inglés por un rato. Entonces, la comentarista original dijo que su situación era exactamente la contraria.  Podía entender todo lo escrito en inglés, pero se sentía más cómoda escribiendo en español.

De ahí en adelante, le dimos ida y vuelta entre el español y el inglés. Yo escribí en ambos idiomas, dependiendo de cuál me parecía mejor para expresar lo que quería decir. 

Al hacerlo, yo represento a otra variante, alguien con una amplia facilidad en los dos idiomas. No hablé inglés hasta que asistí a la escuela primaria. A partir de ese momento, viví vidas paralelas en las que, en casa, sólo hablaba español; en la escuela, sólo inglés. 

En casa, sin embargo, estaba recibiendo otra educación, que a pesar de ser menos formal era igualmente intensa. Estaba involucrada en clases dedicadas al estudio bíblico. También, participaba en servicios religiosos diarios. Además, mi padre, que era poeta y ministro, mantenía una biblioteca que contenía literatura hispánica, obras que mis clases en inglés en gran parte ignoraban.

No obstante esa rica orientación en ambos idiomas, tengo que admitir que, debido a mi estadía en los Estados Unidos, el inglés es el idioma en el que me siento más capaz y cómoda. 

En nuestra discusión de Facebook, no todos mis primos compartieron mi facilidad con ambos idiomas. Sin embargo, todos nos entendíamos, independientemente del idioma utilizado. La conexión fue real.

¿Será esta flexibilidad con el lenguaje únicamente representante de una generación de transición para aquellos latinos que viven en los Estados Unidos? ¿Se encontrará limitada la próxima generación al uso y a la comprensión de un solo idioma? ¿Qué significará esto culturalmente para los Latinos? ¿Cómo se verá afectada nuestra literatura, nuestra política, nuestra visión del mundo?

I don’t know y no sé.        

A Human Being Died that Night

Every now and then, someone writes with a heart so open, it is both painful and life affirming. Judy Croome, South African author, has written a post so powerful it deserves wide-spread recognition. Writing poignantly about her post-apartheid nation, Croome bared her soul with candor, regret, and hope. Her post’s power and raw honesty left me speechless. We are honored by Croome’s willingness to open her heart to us. I don’t know if one can assert that South Africa’s particular cauldron of issues is more complex than most. After all, life is in its essence complex. Just its very mystery introduces complexity. Yet, South Africa seems to be a crucible, in the present era, for the challenges humanity faces in defining what is good and what is evil. Here is the link to her post.

A Human Being Died that Night

My Musical Helpers

As I near the end of the first draft of my work-in-progress novel, I have been running scared. The fear comes from two sources. First, though the end is in sight, I still worry I will not pull off finishing the novel. Second, I will soon have to bid so long to the characters who have inhabited my life since last Fall. My fictional characters invariably come to feel like real people to me, and I miss them when they are gone.

I have used various coping mechanisms, but none so effective as a performance by the South African Drakensberg Boys Choir. Judy Croome introduced them to me in one of her recent posts, and I keep listening again and again to their music. Sometimes I am just carried along with their joy. Sometimes I think of how improbable their gathering would have been not so long ago. It may be a bit of a stretch but that accomplishment gives me hope that I too can pull off my (admittedly less consequential) endeavor.

Here is The Drakensberg Boys Choir:





This is the comment I left on Judy's post:

"May the joy on those boys' faces be translated into a way of life for them and the world. May their harmony smooth any harshness life brings as they navigate the separateness the world may impose on them. May through them love find its way to all of us."

May they also help me finish my novel.

The Education of a Writer

At a local university, I recently attended a Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o lecture titled “The Education of a Writer.” This University of California professor, novelist, essayist, and Kenyan refugee discussed the influences which shaped him as a writer.

Thiong’o's varied life experiences as political activist, prisoner, exile, and literature professor have all informed his writing. It was when he spoke of the storytelling tradition of his native Kenyan village, though, that I took special notice. Members of his childhood village frequently gathered to tell stories as a group. Those gatherings, Thiong’o suggested, had a critical impact on him as a storyteller. The spontaneity and audience participation of those gatherings motivated him to seek in his later years a participatory form of storytelling.

I had an aha moment as I heard him describe his village experience. I realized I had an equivalent experience in my own life. My childhood “village,” the church, had gathered every night (yes, every night) to sing, give personal testimony, and share Biblical stories. It was done with music, chant, and prayer, as well as with lecture.

I have often spoken of my father’s influence on me as a writer. I have not highlighted though how the nightly church services of my childhood impacted me as a storyteller. Layered throughout my writing are the cadences and voices of those nightly services. It was in church then that I learned to tell stories with song and meaning. It was there that I became a storyteller, even if my own stories later turned out to be vastly different.

Was there an equivalent collective experience which formed you as a writer?

Pilgrim Soul

A Spanglish Christmas Eve Encore

I take a break from novel writing et al. to wish you a wonderful holiday. Here's a repeat of the Spanglish version of "Twas the Night Before Christmas."

Chihuahuas y La Noche Buena

Adapted by Río Lara-Bellon.

'Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the casa
Ni un ratón se movía. ¡Caramba! ¿Qué pasa?
Los niños were all tucked away en sus camas,
Some in long underwear, some in pijamas.
While Mamá worked late in her little cocina
El viejo was down at the corner cantina
Living it up with amigos, ¡carajo!
Muy contento y un poco borracho.
While hanging the stockings with mucho cuidado,
In hopes that old Santa would feel obligado
To bring a los niños both buenos y malos,
A nice batch of dulces y otros regalos.
Outside in the yard there arose such a grito
That I jumped to my feet like a frightened cabrito.
I ran to the window y miré afuera
And who in the world do you think that it era?
Santo Nikos in a sleigh and a big red sombrero
Came dashing along like a crazy bombero!
And pulling his sleigh, instead of venados,
Were eight little chihuahuas, approaching volados.
I watched as they came and this quaint little hombre
Was shouting and whistling and calling by nombre:
¡Ay Milo! ¡Ay Tobee! ¡Ay Frida y Sasha!
¡Ay Todo! ¡Ay Pepe! ¡Ay Paco y Nacho!
Then standing erect with hand en su pecho
He flew to the top of our very own techo
With his round little belly like a bowl of jalea
He struggled to squeeze down our old chimenea.
Then huffing and puffing, at last in our sala,
With soot smeared all over his traje de gala,
He filled all the stockings with bonitos regalos
For none of the niños had been muy malos.
Then chuckling aloud, seeming muy contento,
He turned like a flash y voló como el viento.
And I heard him exclaim (¡ay, es la verdad!)
“¡MERRY CHRISTMAS A TODOS! ¡FELIZ NAVIDAD!”


Adaptation Copyright © 1996 by Río Lara-Bellon All Rights Reserved.



I now bid you so long for the remainder of the holiday season. Have a Happy New Year!

A Week with Two Queens

Okay, neither wore a real crown and one would probably be insulted at being included in the other’s company. But I had such a good time with each in the last week that I wanted to share them with you.

First Queen: the Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz. Celia has been gone now for seven years. It’s only that every time I hear her unique voice she sounds as alive as ever. She was exiled from Cuba after Castro came to power. She subsequently came to the attention of the world beyond Latin America during her 1970s Fania All-Stars tours with other artists of the salsa genre. The thing about Celia was that her outrageous wigs and flamboyant costumes were absolutely unnecessary given her resplendent voice. They just made us appreciate her uniqueness even more.

Here she is, probably already in her 70s, surrounded by young people in Miami Beach who can’t help but dance to her music. The song is “La Vida Es un Carnaval” (tr. Life Is a Carnival). In it, she says, “There is no need to cry. Life is a carnival, and it’s better to live singing … your pain will leave while singing ….” It’s a song I will listen to if I am feeling sad, and it usually brings a smile to my face.





Second Queen: Teresa Mendoza, heroine of The Queen of the South, written by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. This respected Spanish writer whose fiction and nonfiction have been translated widely is also a former investigative journalist. La Reina del Sur was given to me by a family member who did not inform me that it was a novel. For the first 80 pages, I thought I was reading Pérez-Reverte’s exposé of the drug trafficking trade in México and Spain as seen through the eyes of Teresa Mendoza, a moll who later became head of the biggest drug smuggling operation in the western Mediterranean. I thought she was such a fascinating woman that I wanted to see what else had been written about her so I went on the internet. That was when I discovered that the gripping tale I was reading was actually a novel; a thriller, a type of novel I rarely read.




According to the customer reviews on Amazon, the novel is excellent even in translation, which I had wondered about because of the pervasive use of Mexican and Spanish slang. Perhaps what makes this such an interesting read is that Pérez-Reverte, availing himself of the tools of journalism, did extensive background research which is reflected in the novel’s feel of authenticity. If you want a novel you can escape into and also learn a great deal, The Queen of the South (La Reina del Sur) is it.

Le Lo Lai - Puerto Rico's Plena Music

Plena is a musical folkloric genre of Puerto Rico, whose creation was influenced by African and Spanish music. I could tell you that I am posting this to introduce plena to those not familiar with this type of music. The truth is, I’m posting this because I love the sound. Plena is the music I grew up with, even if it was often in its church incarnation.

Here’s Ricky Martin with a contemporary version of the genre, Pégate [come closer, unite] And you don't have to really understand the words. Just dance along or sing, "Le lo lei le lo le lo lai." That's a quintessentially Puerto Rican expression of pure happiness.

Link for the entire Puerto Rican identity and culture series

It’s Been Quite a Year

My Pilgrim Soul adventure started August of last year with a post about the similarities between authors Chinua Achebe, Ron Rash, and, I hoped, one of my novels. To my delight, blogging introduced me to a richly rewarding online community. What's more, for the first time the publishing decision about my writing was, for better or worse, entirely mine. Wow, what a privilege.

So here’s a great big thank you to those who have been with me on my pilgrimage as it evolved from focusing solely on my fiction to embracing broader issues of culture, religion, writing craft, and heroism. Because most of you were not here at the beginning, I am sharing an updated version of one of my earliest posts:

“How the Rediscovery of My Father’s Words Led to My Writing Fiction.”

The first novel I ever wrote was birthed in a time of great upheaval in my life. I had walked away from my business career the year before. My marriage had ended. My father died soon after. In retrospect, it is not surprising that I might try something new like writing fiction. How it actually happened though still astounds me.

After my father's death, I began transcribing his poetry, essays, and sermons to distribute to family and friends. It was challenging work for several reasons. Many of the audio tapes were of abysmal quality. Despite that, his familiar voice still rose above the scratchiness, and I grieved that I would never again hear him speak directly to me. More than once, I almost abandoned the project, convinced I was only prolonging my grieving.

As if that weren’t already challenging enough, my father’s sermons were all in Spanish, no longer my primary language. I found myself rummaging through his huge unabridged dictionary, trying to find words no one used in ordinary language. At least I never heard them. It was often frustrating as I was never sure I had heard a word correctly, given the sometimes awful quality of the tapes.

Several months later, having listened to the final tape and transcribed the last sermon, I sent out the material to family and friends. That was when I realized that, instead of prolonging my grieving process, my transcription project had actually eased my transition into a world in which I could no longer pick up the phone to talk to my dad.

That was not the only surprise. I woke up one morning with the lines of an unfamiliar Spanish poem swirling in my head. I wrote down the poem and, for the next few months, found myself writing poetry in Spanish, something I’d never done before. And, no, I’ve not looked at those poems recently. I’d rather keep alive the memory of how magical a time writing those poems was rather than think about editing.

The period of writing poems in Spanish lasted about half a year. One morning, as surprising as when it first appeared, the impulse to write poetry vanished. Soon after, though, I found myself, again, waking up with material sloshing in my brain that seemed to want to be written down. That turned out to be the beginning of a novel. And for the first time in my adult life, I felt I was exactly where I should be, writing fiction.

In the years since, my writing craft has improved, and I have come to appreciate how the hard work of creating a novel or story involves taking that initial magical spark of inspiration and, through dogged hard work, transforming it into something in which story, characters, dialogue, conflict, and style cohere. I wonder, though, if any of my subsequent novels and short stories would have been written had I not undertaken transcribing my father’s work.

***

Thank you, papi, for your marvelous gift of prompting me to write fiction. Thank you, readers, for sharing my pilgrimage over the last year.

The Ladies’ Gallery by Irene Vilar, a Book Review

A review of this memoir had been planned well before the author’s legendary grandmother Lolita Lebrón died in early August. I almost cancelled the review as a result. I did not want this to be viewed as yet another eulogy about the woman who in 1954 led a small armed group into the visitor’s gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives. There, after a cry of “Long Live a Free Puerto Rico!” Lolita Lebrón and her companions opened fire, wounding five lawmakers. For that act, which I do not condone, she served 25 years in prison.

Then I realized that I probably would not have read The Ladies' Gallery except for the fact that the author was Lolita Lebrón’s granddaughter. The book is a commendable addition to the body of mental illness memoirs, but what makes it unique is the behind-the-scenes insight into the family of a mythic figure in Puerto Rican history. This memoir is, at times, disturbing because suicide and mental illness figure prominently across generations. It could also be considered a cautionary tale about the perils of pursuing zealously a consuming dream; in Lebrón’s case, the independence of Puerto Rico.

In The Ladies’ Gallery, Irene Vilar alternates italicized sections focused on the author’s prior mental illness with non-italicized sections focused on her unique family history. We discover that when Lolita Lebrón moved to New York in 1941, she turned over her infant daughter Gladys to her mother and then barely saw her again. Thirty-seven years later, Gladys herself will abandon her own daughter Irene Vilar by throwing herself from a moving car. The author, then eight years old, would try to stop her mother, only to be left holding a remnant of lace. Vilar later navigates her own journey with suicidal depression.

The Ladies’ Gallery is a sometimes emotionally raw voyage into desperate mental illness. It also provides a unique view of the lasting impact on a family when a member becomes a controversial and iconic public figure. The intertwined tale of three generations of women is told with honesty and pain. Lolita Lebrón looms large in this tale. About her grandmother, Vilar says, “My grandmother obviously saw herself as a martyr for the liberation of Puerto Rico.” The cost of that martyrdom for Lebrón's extended family was huge. In the end, Vilar compares her grandmother, mother, and herself to Homer’s Sirens, about whom she says, “The song of the Sirens is the great paradox that suicides and madmen know.”

Of potential interest:

Pilgrim Soul posts about Puerto Rico

Prince Royce, Shakira, and Blended Cultural Identity

My car radio had just finished playing Prince Royce’s version of “Stand by Me” when Shakira came on with “NO,” and I thought, what a great way to portray the multicultural reality of most Latin Americans. These two artists demonstrate how racially and culturally we are a powerful amalgam of centuries-old forces which have created a daily reality of intrinsic crossover.

Prince Royce is a young Dominican who grew up in New York. Shakira is Colombian-Lebanese. Prince Royce, by featuring Dominican bachata and interweaving Spanish and English, transformed a classic song. Shakira, while singing entirely in Spanish, created a unique sound by incorporating hints of Middle Eastern intonations.

Because this blog focuses frequently on the blended culture of most Latin Americans, I wanted to share these songs with you. Enjoy.

Cultural Identity – Speaking "Bilingual"

The language purists among you may not want to read further as you might be scandalized. I am proposing that for those of us who are bilingual, speaking in both languages within the same conversation is not only acceptable but also may be the most optimal way to communicate.

On the phone with my cousin the other day, we found ourselves speaking at different times in Spanish; at other times, in English. We would complete two or three sentences in one language and then follow with two or three in the other. Only after shifting to the other language would I suddenly become aware of the shift. The transition had been that seamless and unconscious.

It was a fun conversation. It was as if my cousin and I shared a private code which freed us to be natural with each other. We didn’t have to confine ourselves to a given language box. Indeed, one of the reasons speaking that way is so rewarding is that it is the only time I can reflect fully in my speech my specific life story. I came to the US from Puerto Rico at a very young age, after which I spoke only Spanish at home and in church, while at school I only spoke English. The two tracks remained essentially parallel, and to a large extent, except in conversations like the one with my cousin, they remain so today.

I am not proposing that we stop honoring the syntax of each language when in a monolingual setting. I believe in mastering the grammar and vocabulary of each language, and it is only polite to be place appropriate. Though I am sometimes guilty of this, I also try to avoid a language shift within the same sentence. However, when two people fluent in the same languages are conversing, why not take advantage of the greater supply of vocabulary and grammatical structures available?

Literature will inevitably reflect this. One of the things I found appealing about the Pulitzer-Prize-winning The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz was his seamless incorporation of different languages and styles of speech: colloquial versus learned diction, English versus Spanish, science fiction/comic book language versus regular English. Díaz seemed to recognize that language can no longer be defined by the classroom. It is a lived language. In our increasingly culturally fungible world, this will likely result in more variety and freedom in our modes of expression. At least I hope so.

Farewell to an Old Friend

Just yesterday, I handed the keys of my aging silver car to its new owner. I watched him open the door and then drive away. Well, that’s a relief, I thought. The car is sold. The transaction went smoothly. I received a decent price. Then I headed for my husband’s car.

Let me tell you something about Husband's car. Its custom license plate makes reference to having fun, something which turned ironic when a policeman stopped him for speeding and said, “You having fun?” Anyway, he had waited for me in his dark green convertible with the top down while I watched the new owner drive away. After our years together, my husband recognized that I needed my sentimental moment of saying good-bye to my faithful companion of many years. I then opened the door of my husband's car, sat down, and noticed absently that music was playing.

Then I realized what the music was, and my eyes teared. He had chosen a CD which, when the album first came out, was a favorite for us while on trips in my old car. All the songs of that Buena Vista Social Club album are still loved, but Chan Chan remains a first among equals. Hearing it was a reminder that the transaction which had just occurred was not a simple head decision. It also involved the heart.

We then went on a drive while Chan Chan played. The wind lifted my hair. The sun warmed my face. I listened to those Cuban old-timers weave their magic while I reminisced about the wonderful moments my old car and I had shared. So here again is my fond farewell to my silver companion, my good friend of many years.





For the impact of music on the brain, you might also want to check out my earlier post:

Musicophilia

Puerto Rican Culture – Mofongo

mofongo [moh – fohn′ – goh]

All the way home from school, I wondered if my mother’s morning promise would actually happen. Would she or would she not prepare mofongo as she had said that morning? I could barely contain my excitement as I opened our door. An aroma of garlic wafted toward me, but was it from the mofongo? The moment I walked into our kitchen and saw the pilón wood mortar, I knew I had gotten my wish. I didn’t need milk and cookies as an after-school treat. Mami had prepared the mashed plaintain dish for me. I could sit and eat mofongo directly from the pilón. If my nonPuerto Rican classmates only knew what they were missing!

Though mofongo is a traditional Puerto Rican dish, its origins may have been the fufu dish of Africa. It is also now popular in the Dominican Republic and elsewhere in the Caribbean. Indeed, today, I will travel an hour and a half to reach a Cuban restaurant that serves the best authentic mofongo around.

There are probably as many mofongo recipes as there are cooks, but here is a basic one, courtesy of ElBoricua.com:

MOFONGO

(Makes about 3 medium size balls)

Monfongo is made by mashing tostones (twice fried plantains) with garlic, olive oil, and chicharrón or bacon.

3 green plantains

1 tablespoon crushed garlic

1 tablespoon olive oil

½ lb. chicharrón or cooked bacon (crumbled)

Vegetable oil for frying

First make tostones as follows:

green plantains

oil for frying

garlic powder

salt

Slice the peeled plantains diagonally into 1" slices. Fry the slices over medium heat until they soften. Remove from oil and drain on paper towels. Using a tostonera (a press), slightly mash each piece to about half an inch in thickness. If a tostonera is not available insert the pieces between a folded piece of brown-paper sack and press down using a saucer. It is best to press all the pieces first before going on the next step. Dip each piece in warm salted water and fry again until crispy. Remove from the oil and drain on paper towels.

Next, mix together the garlic olive oil and chicharrón or bacon.

Mash the tostones, a few at a time in the pilón (never use a food processor), adding a little bit of the garlic mixture. You will have to work a few slices at a time. When all done mix all the batches together for even distribution of seasoning. Add salt if needed. This is a side dish that needs to be served warm. Keep forming balls until mixture is all used up.

Serve with fried pork meat and fried onions, or with soup, or as a side dish….. yummy!

Even The New York Times has recognized the humble mofongo, though their version looks a little too gentrified for my tastes. You can also have the relleno versions, where the mofongo is stuffed with additional ingredients. Pork, shrimp, and chicken are among the favorites, but stewed beef and other seafood can also be used. All delicious. And, seriously, almost the best part of eating mofongo is eating it right out of the pilón.

Now let me see if I can convince my husband to hop in our car and head for La Carreta Restaurant.

A Hero’s Journey – Pancho Valverde and the Silent Voices of Society

“Slide In, My Dark One, Between the Crosstie and the Whistle”

by

Elena Poniatowski

In a shift from this series’ earlier focus on public figures, this time I highlight a hero from what Mexico’s Elena Poniatowski calls the silent voices of society. I do so by reviewing her above-mentioned short story, in which Pancho, a steam train engineer, copes with being displaced by the innovation of the diesel engine.

Poniatowski’s portrayal of this ordinary train engineer is elevated, first, by her sensuously written analogy of the love Pancho has for his wife Teresa and the love he also holds for his train engine La Prieta. “… when Teresa sat on top of him while they made love, … Pancho felt as satisfied then as he did before his engine’s control panel. A dense happiness slid through him.”

The story is also elevated by Poniatowski’s exquisite sensitivity to the psychology of loss. Pancho’s heartbreak is expressed with the resignation of the powerless and dispossessed, “Anyway, he’s used to it by now; he can put up with that and a lot more; he can put up with a helluva lot.”

Both of Pancho’s loves end up betraying him: Teresa, by leaving him for another man; and La Prieta, by being displaced by a diesel engine. Though the doubly heartbroken Pancho tries valiantly to fit into the new modern order, his now obsolete skills offer him no place there. He is further destabilized because Teresa’s absence left him bereft of a soft landing in the face of jarring professional loss.

For a while, Pancho runs the impersonal new diesels while continuing as a union leader. “…the older guys respect Pancho and the younger ones want to be noticed by him. The superintendent feels the same way.” In the end, though, Pancho acknowledges the permanency and enormity of his losses: his Teresa, his beloved Prieta, and his full value as a steam rail engineer.

Pancho then steals with impunity his old engine La Prieta and disappears into the countryside. After a while, “… a rumor is spreading of a runaway engine that makes ghost runs, and at night you can hear how the engineer opens the steam valve and then the mountain echoes with a long lament, like the cry of a wounded animal, a deep pained cry that cuts the mountains of Puebla in two.”

Elena Poniatowski was born in Paris to a Polish father and Mexican mother and has worked as a journalist. She published a novel, Hasta No Verte, Jesús Mío, about Mexican history from pre-Revolutionary days to more recent times. She has also written a testimonial narrative of the 1968 Tlatelco massacre, Massacre in Mexico. Again, melding history with social commentary, she has written a number of other short stories.

Fundamentally, this particular story, “Slide In, My Dark One …,” depicts how an individual, faced with deep loss and armed with limited resources, strives to maintain intact his personal dignity. Pancho’s is a quiet heroism, as is true of so many of the silent voices of society who live challenging lives without acclaim. Pancho made his final heroic stand by disappearing, perhaps in recognition of being powerless to change the new order; in the process, becoming a mythic figure. Dramatic technological, political, and socio-economic shifts are today an increasing reality for many. Let us hope they too can find their voices.

Source Anthology: Beyond the Border: A New Age in Latin American Women's Fiction


Other Hero’s Journey Posts:

Nelson Mandela

William Joseph Seymour - A Son of Slaves Sparks an International Religious Revival

Mercedes Sosa

Gilgamesh – The Original Literary Hero

About My Blog and Me

Some of you may have noticed that last week I modified slightly the layout of this blog. Where the About Me section used to be, I introduced an About This Blog paragraph to identify the themes of Pilgrim Soul. The About Me section moved to the right column.

This change may seem minor, but it reflects an important evolution in me as a blog writer. When I first began Pilgrim Soul in 2009, it was to develop a platform to introduce my fiction. Very quickly, though, blogging turned into something more as I began meeting fellow bloggers from around the world who engaged me on fascinating topics with varied points of view. Their comments have even resulted in my incorporating topics I had not expected to address separately from my fiction; for example, my series on Puerto Rican identity. Pilgrim Soul became my gateway to an international party, and I didn’t even have to go through airport security to get there!

That would have been rewarding enough but along the way, I made another discovery. In writing for Pilgrim Soul, I also met myself fully. The blog’s label gadget surprised me by highlighting just how often I wrote about topics having to do with the intersection of culture and religion. That made me conscious of something I have lived with all my life, but which I had not acknowledged fully, the degree to which I have been formed by that intersection and how it continues to influence me.

In my exchanges with the international community of fellow bloggers, I also became aware of how my personal experience was part of a greater development. The identification of historical shifts is often left to historians after the fact. I believe we are living in a time in which those shifts are so palpable we don’t have to wait for historians. Important cultural and racial paradigms are at a juncture in which the old definitions are faltering but new ones have not yet been well established. I thank my blog for helping me personally to acknowledge and revel in the blessing and challenge of experiencing an historical turning point like this one. I also thank my readers for facilitating my pilgrimage of self knowledge.

Puerto Rican Identity – The U.S. Census and Race

Filled the census form
and was left shaking my head.
I don’t know my race.

Hispanics carry
the gene pool of the planet.
Europe Africa Asia ….

I marked three boxes
proclaiming my race to be
indeterminate.

Marking three boxes, incidentally, is permissible. However imperfect their designations are, I salute the Census Bureau for at least recognizing that some of us do not fit into the old either-or categories. Indeed, they go to great lengths to accommodate the question of Hispanic origin, with question 8 asking whether the Hispanic origins were Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban et al. That said, how does an Hispanic then answer the next question about race? Here are the options:

Question 9. What is Person 1’s race? Mark one or more boxes.

· White
· Black, African Am., or Negro
· American Indian or Alaska Native
· Asian Indian
· Japanese
· Native Hawaiian
· Chinese
· Korean
· Guamanian or Chamorro
· Filipino
· Vietnamese
· Samoan
· Other Asian
· Other Pacific Islander
· Some other race

I’ll stick with the question of Hispanic racial origin and not address why Asians got so many variants, and whites and blacks so few; or even why Koreans, for example, are now considered a race. At least the Bureau was trying to accommodate racial diversity. The problem for me is that because Hispanic racial mixture took place over centuries, identifying racial origin with certainty is difficult. My racial identification has always been problematic. Most people looking at me would instantly identify me as white. A careful look at my features, though, gives evidence that somewhere in my gene pool also existed the Africans and Amerindians who contributed to the genealogy of those now identified as Puerto Ricans.

I marked all three boxes, albeit with a lingering uncertainty about whether I was answering properly. I am not sure, for example, whether the decidedly Asian cast of some of my relatives' features has its origins in Puerto Rico's Taíno Indians or whether it is the result of cross fertilization occurring in the Canary Islands from which some of my ancestors came. The racial mix is there. Where it came from, I really can't say.

Responding to the Census question also made me uneasy because it prompted me to think of the shortfalls we Hispanics still have in our own racial self identification. Hispanics, who have been called The Cosmic Race because of our racial inclusivity, should glory in our broad racial heritage. We are in the vanguard, after all, in a world with increasingly permeable cultural and racial boundaries. Yet, if one looks at the race of actors appearing in popular telenovelas, arguably a substitute for prevailing attitudes, the preponderance of the Caucasian Hispanic is striking. Sometimes when I look at Spanish-speaking television, I feel as if I am in a time warp because the lack of racial diversity resembles what existed in English-speaking media back in the 1970s or earlier. Maybe by forcing a discussion among Hispanics about racial identity, the Census Bureau will have done us a great service.

Related Post:
Who Is Puerto Rican?

“Write What You Know,” Marketing, and Me

Every writer who has taken a writing class or received a critique has heard, “Write what you know.” It is a good rule, encouraging depth and originality. Defining What I Know, though, can get really complicated. Of all the various facets of a person, which is worthy of being mined for a story? To make self branding effective, should a writer always aim her pick at the same pile of rocks? And why does this matter in the quest to publish one’s novels?

My novels and short stories address such disparate subjects as religion, Latino culture, the immigrant experience, life aboard a boat, the business world, the challenges of poverty, illness, addiction, et al. What I Know comes from having sojourned among the religiously devout as well as the devoutly atheist. I have lived in a mountainside shack and have worked in the White House. I have mingled among the wealthy and powerful and have lived among the humble and destitute. I consider both English and Spanish to be my native tongues. This is the What I Know that has fed my writing.

Viewed singly, samples of my writing might be construed by a marketer to fit any of the following genres: literary, religion/spiritual, ethnic, multicultural, adventure, inspirational, politics, and business. In my understandable reluctance to force fit myself into any single genre, I apparently am not unique among authors. I can hear my compatriot writers chant, “I am not a uni-dimensional being.” The problem is that this self-reinforcing sense of specialness will not help us facilitate our work’s journey from computer disk to bookstore.

I come from a business background and deeply respect the business world’s imperative to create market segments in order to sell effectively. Certainly, in the publishing realm, we recognize that the market for a John Grisham novel might be different than that for a Salmon Rushdie one. If I want someone to invest real money to publish and sell my books, I have to be mindful of market realities. If good writing has its rules of engagement so does good business. Stacy Glick from Dystel & Goderich says it best. “I usually find this [inability to choose a single genre] problematic for the simple reason that a book that is described this way often suffers from an identity crisis, and publishers want to be able to clearly identify how a book will be positioned, marketed, promoted, and at its most basic level, where it will "live" in the bookstores….”

Practical person that I am, I acknowledge that if I want to achieve my publishing dream, I must take a stand about the nature of my work, i.e., choose a genre. This is true even if I believe that all the genres listed above, while each a possible fit, miss the point of my work. I write, I like to think, not about my chameleon-like residence within any of the multiple genres, but about my pilgrimage across their boundaries. If I’m going to play with other people’s money, though, I think it’s a fair requirement to follow their rules.

Luckily for me, I have been told that the quality of my writing is good enough to fit into that, itself, amorphous genre known as Literary. From now on, whenever I write a query letter to an agent, I will call my work literary. Sure, Literary is apparently not selling at the moment, but the issue of publishing fads has to be the subject of another post or else this already long one will never end.

Perhaps for me, though, What I Know is Not Belonging. One of my blog readers once said that “belonging to not belonging” might better define my writing. She wrote that in a comment about my short story “The Cry of Lares,” where the protagonist talks about living with a dual awareness of “…who I’ve left behind versus who I’ve taken up with.”

My deep suspicion is that many of us live with a sense of Otherness that we mask by fostering intense attachment to some group, be it school, nation, sports team, culture, family, advocacy group, etc. My other suspicion is that, in our increasingly mobile and interconnected world, more and more of us will navigate the interstices of previously rigid national and cultural boundaries. In the here and now, though, publishers, agents, and authors must acknowledge those boundaries.

Does this mean that the commercial realities of publishing will favor those who can self define easily at the expense of those squiggling across borders, when ironically the latter might represent an increasing percentage of writers and readers? What do you think?

Related posts

What Is Multicultural Fiction?

For Whom Does the Writer Write?

Puerto Rican Identity - Birth Certificates

A recent AP article said, “Native Puerto Ricans living outside the island territory are reacting with surprise and confusion after learning their birth certificates will become no good this summer.”

This news got my attention. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens at birth, and while this new requirement does not imperil their U.S. citizenship, it highlights the unique political circumstance of Puerto Ricans.

The reason for the new requirement is a recently enacted island law targeted at combating identity theft. According to the U.S. State Department, as much as 40 percent of identity fraud in the U.S. involves birth certificates from Puerto Rico. It would be speculation on my part to say why that might be. Perhaps, for people needing Spanish surnames for entry into the US, a birth certificate from Puerto Rico is akin to gold. Another reason may be, according to Puerto Rican government official Kenneth D. McClintock, that in Puerto Rico, “…. birth certificates were required and filed away for everything in life, every school you registered in, every summer camp, ballet school, little league and other activities. Up until last December schools were broken into, not to steal computers, but old school records.”

Whatever the reasons for or the effectiveness of this new law, what is clear is that millions of Puerto Ricans must get new birth certificates this summer, including more than a third of the 4.1 million people of Puerto Rican descent living outside the island. The other thing that is predictable is that among those millions will be many irritated folks who probably can’t even remember the last time they had to access their birth certificate, but who now must obtain a new one. When was the last time you had to produce your birth certificate?

Related Post:

Who Is Puerto Rican?

A Hero's Journey - Mercedes Sosa

In February 1982, Argentine folksinger Mercedes Sosa returned from exile and appeared on a Buenos Aires concert stage for the first time in three years. Simply appearing on stage took considerable courage since at her last concert in Argentina, Mercedes Sosa had been arrested, along with her audience. After that, bowing to international pressure, the military junta allowed her to go into exile, where she first lived in Paris and then in Spain.

Given that background, the atmosphere in the theater was understandably electric on that February summer night twenty-eight years ago. In an auditorium filled to capacity, fans lined the walls and stood in the back, waiting anxiously. As it turned out, no one needed to know Mercedes Sosa’s already stirring history to be captivated. When La Negra's voice, banned by the junta for years, rang out with its first pure chords, all knew they were in the presence of musical genius. As the evening wore on, Mercedes Sosa sang their hopes of liberation and expressed their sorrow about a grief still otherwise unspoken. Whether young or old, all faces shone with tears and joy. It was as if a nation, so long immersed in terror and persecution, found its voice again.

As for Argentina, within two months of this concert, the junta, perhaps sensing their waning support, launched the disastrous Falkland Islands/Las Malvinas war. That ultimately so discredited them in the eyes of the world and their own countrymen that, by the end of the year, the military was out of power and Argentina held its first democratic election in ten years.

Mercedes Sosa died at 74 in October 2009, having lived a remarkable life that took her from a provincial Argentine town to performing in front of sold-out crowds all over the world. In honor of her courage, indeed heroism, in February 1982 and throughout her life, I post these videos of some of my favorite Mercedes Sosa songs.

"La Cigarra" [The Cicada] The song talks of repeatedly being killed and then resurrecting after being given up for dead. The chorus: "I kept singing like the cicada which, after a year underground, sings to the sun; like the survivor, who returns from war."

"Gracias a la Vida " [Thank you, Life] with Joan Baez

"Canción con Todos" [Song with Everyone] This is frequently referred to as the Latin American anthem. One of its lines says: "I feel as I walk all the skin of America in my skin and in my blood runs a river that liberates its flow in my voice."

Other posts in the A Hero's Journey series:

Nelson Mandela

William Joseph Seymour - A Son of Slaves Sparks an International Religious Revival

The Original Literary Hero - Gilgamesh

Puerto Rican Culture - Pasteles

pasteles [pahs tehl' ehs]

An eight-year-old girl squeezes in between her aunts' ample hips and peeks at the mounds of grated tropical vegetables—plantain, guineo verde, and yautía—crowding her mother’s kitchen table. An aroma of garlic and onions wafts in from the huge bowl holding chopped pork, already browned in achiote oil. Near the meat are cilantro, garbanzos, and sweet peppers. And olives! The girl loves, just loves olives, and it takes every bit of self control not to extend her arm through the narrow space between her aunts’ hips to grab an olive and drop it in her mouth. Indeed, she is about to do that when her tía Rosa reaches across the table to pick up a banana leaf to wrap a pastel before it’s dropped in the caldero’s boiling water. The girl tries to back out, but her aunts’ hips now lock her in a soft grip. If she moves, one of the ladies on the pasteles assembly line might notice that the little girl is not doing what a Puerto Rican niña has to learn as a rite of passage—how to make the pasteles she will be preparing for the rest of her life.






Why are pasteles such a big deal in the Puerto Rican firmament? I could say it’s because pasteles are delicious—they are!—but I’ve discovered from some of my nonPR friends that they might be an acquired taste. I wouldn’t know anything about that. In my childhood, this quintessential Puerto Rican dish was always present. It was served on holidays, sold for fundraisers or was available whenever a relative or neighbor took on—thank you!—the arduous task of producing these meat-filled cakes made from soft tropical vegetable dough.

But it’s not just the taste that makes pasteles wonderful. It's the social aspect of the preparation. Making pasteles is so complex and time consuming that it requires a horde of perspiring women chattering on in Spanish, resolving all the ills befalling the extended family. So it’s not just a food event. It's a family one and, ultimately, a cultural one interspersed with a lot of love, sometimes stern, but mostly kind. If it takes a village to raise a child elsewhere, it takes a committee of madrinas to raise an eight-year-old girl (who by now you've guessed was once me) so she understands what it means to be a Puerto Rican woman.

If you really and truly want to see a recipe, click on this picture. The recipe is too long to include in this post.





I’ll end with a memory of my younger brother who used to walk into the kitchen and, noticing the mounds of vegetables waiting to be peeled and grated, would vanish before anyone could say, “Help!” He was of course the first one to turn up hours later when the steaming pasteles were lifted from the big caldero, the first one to smack his lips after eating, even though he’d been repeatedly warned about such uncouthness. Never mind. He was always forgiven. He was, after all, a member of that cadre of foreigners—males—who lavishly praised the skill of the cooks, but who somehow never managed to arrive while any of us were grating vegetables or spooning meat into one interminable pocket of soft dough after another.

Originally, I had another clip, a humorous one which has since been withdrawn by the author. It talked about a more current version of the female comité. It turns out that little boys and men are now included in the ritual.

If you ever get around to tasting or preparing this food, ¡buen provecho!



Other Puerto Rican culture and identity posts:

Who Is Puerto Rican?
Cultural Identity - Part 2
My Puerto Rican Lament - Part 1
My Puerto Rican Lament - Part 2
The Cry of Lares - A Short Story
A Spanglish Christmas Eve
El Cuatro