Latina's Bible The Nueva Latina's Guide to Love, Spirituality, Family, and LA Vida

Introduction: The Joy of Being Nueva Latina For most of our lives the lesson is to love ourselves even more deeply, especially because we are the survivors of colonization . . . that's our fight against injustice! -- Patrisia Gonzales, Chicana-Kikapu writer I am a proud Latina. I am a proud American. I am not exotic. I am two cultures in one fabulous, curvaceous, cafe-con-leche body. I own English. I dream in Spanish. On most days, I'm delighted to explain this marvelous heritage to the curious and clueless who ask questions like, "So Sandra, what are you?" Other days I just repeat to myself, "I am what I am." But I want to tell you what I am, because I think once I do, you'll understand why I've written this bookpara ti, mujer! As a Puerto Ricoborn and U.S.-raised woman, I am layers of history that speak of beaches and snowflakes, rain forests and tenements, Spanish and English, spicy food and fast food, hip-hop and congas, apple pie and flan. I have two homesan America that sometimes refuses to accept me as a legitimate daughter, and a Puerto Rico that sometimes denies me when my Spanish fails me. For as long as I can remember, I always yearned to belong neatly to just one of them. But greater forces were at play. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory with unresolved political and identity issues that date back more than a century. It's neither a state nor a sovereign nation, but an in-between political entity called a "commonwealth"a euphemism for "colony." Puerto Rico is still trying to answer profound political questions about who it is as a nationas a people and as a collection of individuals. We are simultaneously part of the United States and a member nation of the twenty countries that make up Spanish-speaking Latin America. When I think of Puerto Rico's political dilemma, I am reminded of an old Mexican dicho: "Poor Mexicoso close to the U.S., so far from God." I am a Latina who was born into a borderland and raised in a cultural middle. When I was a little girl, my familymy mom, two sisters, and two brothersmade its way north. My mother was a seamstress, but when the factory where she made sneakers (Pro-Keds) closed down, she packed up suitcases full of tropical clothes and we left El Tuque, the small fishing village we called home. We moved to the immigrant working-class town of Jersey City, New Jersey, where some of our other relatives had settled years earlier. Some say that the best thing Jersey City has to offer is a view of Manhattan, but it was there that I became a Jerseyricana combination of American and boricua from New Jersey. There was no such thing as bilingual education in my public school, or even English as a Second Language; it was strictly sink or swim. (Ironically, the school was named in honor of Roberto Clemente, the Puerto Rican baseball legend. Go figure!) But as the daughter of strong and clever people, I learned English quickly. Unfortunately, I also learned to forget Spanishthough I picked up a lot of Spanglish. Lunch, for example, became lonche; roof, rufo; the building's superintendent, el super. Though I was quickly absorbing mainstream americana ways, everything in my Jersey home spoke fluent Latino. The food, the music, the language, la familia's deep religious fervor, las fiestas, las novelas, the traditions. Even the house decor screamed Latinofrom the plastic-covered sofas and the pictures of virgencitas to the thousands of ceramic figurines of elephants, angels, and coquis, Puerto Rico's thumb-size singing frogs. My barrio friends were fellow boricuas, Dominicans, Cubans, EcGuzman, Sandra is the author of 'Latina's Bible The Nueva Latina's Guide to Love, Spirituality, Family, and LA Vida', published 2002 under ISBN 9780609806968 and ISBN 0609806963.