We Never Left

When people have nothing left to lose, they are more likely to fight for what they believe in. This is a thread which runs through every successful rebellion, revolution, or civil rights battle. It's one of life's great ironies: the more we strip a person of his or her freedoms, the less they have to weigh them down and stop them from revolting. I don't in any way mean to make light of the abomination of slavery but, if you enslave a people long enough, it's almost inevitable that a brand of emotional spiritual, and political freedom will emerge. In so many ways, the so-called "first world" is soft. We have so much STUFF, and no one wants to risk losing that stuff. By "stuff," I don't just mean material possessions and wealth, but also status, political power, comfort, convenience, safety, etc.

All the same "stuff" that The Haves love to deprive The Have-Nots of.

Puerto Rico has been colonized since the late 15th century. That's a long time for a people to have everything taken away from them. That's a long, long time for a people to build up their anger. It's a long time for a people to build their strength. It's a long time for a people to claim the brand of freedom that can only come with being oppressed. The people of Puerto Rico have been deprived of so much, for so long, that there is not a damned thing to be lost by rising up.

In telling a Puerto Rican from NYC to go back to where she came from, Trump makes it clear he understands nothing about what it means to be Puerto Rican. I don't just mean that he doesn't understand that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a US citizen (as are ALL Puerto Ricans) and that she was born and raised in NYC.

He has no idea what it means to actually be connected to one's origins.
He has no idea what it means to have love in one's heart for the birthplace of one's parents.
He has no idea what it means to have been raised to love and honor one's culture.
He has no idea what it means to be held high on the shoulders of one's ancestors and be both humbled and empowered by their examples of strength and perseverance.
He has no idea what it means to have pride in anything that is unrelated to making a quick buck.

There's no point telling a Puerto Rican who was born and raised in NYC to "go back." Not a one of us ever really left. Not really. This is true for me. It's true for AOC.

The beautiful thing about the concept of the USA is that we don't have to turn our backs on where we came from. It's why there is no official language in this country.

The actions on the part of the people of Puerto Rico in the last week serve as a humbling reminder of where I truly come from, and what my people are made of. I'm soft - I'm the first to admit it. I've lived a life of relative ease and convenience. I've certainly been afforded benefits and comforts having been born in NYC and living Stateside that my relatives in Guayanilla have not enjoyed. I'm connected to them, though. By blood. By history. By culture. I'm connected to every, single Puerto Rican living on the island. And that's an honor - an honor FOR ME.

Donald Trump - who is completely devoid of honor - can never understand this.

2017: The Year in Review

Not my usual breakdown. For me, 2017 will forever be the year that two hurricanes tore through the island my family has called home for 500+ years....

.....the year that, when the U.S. gov't, FEMA, and Donald Trump failed Puerto Rico during her hour of greatest need, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz stepped up and showed us what compassion, strength, leadership, heart, and courage look like. They look like a Puerto Rican woman.

It's been the year when adversity brought us heroines from unlikely places. For using her money and connections to deliver aid in person, and raise awareness about how the world has failed Puerto Rico, there will be a seat for Bethenny Frankel at every Puerto Rican table, until the day she dies. 

In 2017, Jose Andres stepped up, rolled up his sleeves, fed the people of Puerto Rico, and gave new meaning to the term "rock star chef."

It was the year that Lin-Manuel Miranda got together with the Hispanic world's favorite sons and daughters and did this. If you're Puerto Rican and hearing the name of your family's hometown sung by Ednita Nazario or JLo or Juan Luis Guerra doesn't make your heart skip a beat, check your pulse. 

It was the year that I was truly ashamed - for the first time in my life - to be American, but prouder than ever to be Puerto Rican. 

Puerto Rico se levanta! 

2016: The Year in Review

This won't be another of those "omg-the-world-is-ending-because-2016-was-the-worst-year-ever" posts, because those are a dime a dozen. So, let's get the suckitude out of the way:

A bunch of people died, and a rich, straight, white man won the presidential election. There will almost certainly be thousands of year-in-review posts and articles focusing on these two issues, but this won't be one of them.

She gave it her all. I was with her, 100%. I regret nothing.

Ding, Dong, The Witch is Dead: good riddance to rotting garbage.

RIP: TV is dead. On the other hand, there was lots of great streaming programming. For instance, this. I almost need to light up a cigarette after watching this. The more fucked up you are, Cersei, the more I love you.



It must be said, though - no one kicks ass more than Thandie Newton's Maeve, on Westworld.



Haters Back Off. Netflix gave the lovable YouTube sensation, Miranda Sings, her own show, and it's not at all what one would expect. If you haven't checked it out - especially if you haven't checked it out because Miranda is not your cuppa - do yourself a favor and give this show a chance. It's funny as hell, completely original, has a great ensemble cast of new faces, and it's just teeming with heart. In the midst of this nutty, outlandish premise, these folks make you actually care about the characters. Seriously - give this show a shot. Surprisingly moving, in the most unlikely ways.



Well, the poster was cool: High Rise had a great trailer. The art direction was amazing. The cast was great. Portishead recorded a brilliant cover of one of ABBA's best tunes for it. This movie had everything going for it, except for the fact that it was bloody awful. Truly, truly awful. If you're an animal lover, and you're considering giving it a go, you deserve fair warning: the film basically opens with the main character spit-roasting his dog and eating the poor creature. It's supposed to be darkly funny. Instead, it's one of the most disturbing scenes I've ever watched in a film. And I don't mean, "OMG...they really broke ground and made that scene so thought-provoking!" I mean, "Fucking hell - that was obscene, completely gratuitous and, ultimately, made a bad movie worse." The cover of SOS IS pretty fucking great, though.



2016 was a great year for documentaries. Here are a few of my faves.

Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures. Uncompromising, even as it celebrates his beautiful work. A lot about the way he carried out his life and work - especially when it comes to race - can be pretty problematic, but the work, itself is beautiful. This film never loses sight of either of those facts.

Author: The JT Leroy Story. You probably know some of this story. Don't read anything more about it before seeing this. If you know nothing, even better. Speaks volumes about art and the creation of it, about the cult of fame, the inner workings of the famous and celebrated, and about the truth, itself.

No Home Movie. This is not for everyone. If I'm honest, it's probably for very few people. I found it incredibly moving, and it stayed with me for days, after. I'm not sure I've ever seen a better representation of the emptiness left behind when the most important person we know dies. 

I don't care about the Olympic Games, but I love it that Puerto Ricans were a force to be reckoned with, this time around. 

This.

Planes, Trains, Automobiles, and Loved Ones FTW.

The War On Women: Business as Usual

I keep reading about the war on women that's happening now in America. It's awful, what's happening - government trying to take control over women's health, sexuality, reproduction, and freedoms. I hate it. But it's nothing new.

I've written a lot about my maternal grandmother, Celina, but I've never written about Jovita, my father's mother. Jovita was as different from Celina as possible. While Celina was bright and witty and full of joy, Jovita was uneducated, somewhat shy, and she had very little humor. This isn't to say that she wasn't a good person: she was, and she treated me well. Her life, though, was full of pain and tragedy. One of her earliest memories was of her father being murdered on the streets of San Juan, Puerto Rico. A terrible thing for a child to live with, and, in many ways,  it set the tone of her life.

Jovita moved from Puerto Rico to NYC with her little boy - my father - in 1946. She was a single mother, when that was not an acceptable thing to be.  She made her son the center of her universe, and worked at whatever she could find, to keep him fed and clothed and healthy. Usually piecework at factories, or cleaning homes and offices.

In 1963, my parents met and married, and my mother became friendly with her mother-in-law. One day, when my mother mentioned that she needed to see her gynecologist, Jovita revealed that she'd never been to such a doctor and had, in fact, never had a gynecological exam. My mother was shocked. She advised Jovita that it really would be a good idea to have an exam, and to start having them annually. Jovita agreed to go to my mother's doctor, Dr. Seissman. A few days later, my mother took her mother-in-law to the gynecologist for her first exam. My grandmother would have been in her 60s.

My mother waited in the waiting room while Dr. Seissman performed the exam. A few minutes later, my mother was called in to translate. Jovita, you see, only spoke a few words of English. My mother entered the examination room and found my grandmother sitting up, looking confused, and Dr. Seissman looking equally bewildered.

"Carmen," she said, "please ask your mother-in-law when she had a radical hysterectomy, and why it was performed."

This was news to my mother. She'd never heard about Jovita having had such major surgery. She asked Dr. Seissman if she was sure of this.

"Yes," the doctor answered, "I'm absolutely sure. She has no uterus. Nothing, at all. And it looks to have been done quite a while back. I'd like to know why this was done - does she have a history of cancer?"

My mother asked Jovita about it, only to have Jovita reply that she didn't know what a hysterectomy was, and that she'd never been sick in any way.  My mother asked her about menopause, and Jovita answered that, a year or two after my father been born - when she was just 30 - all the woman in her neighborhood in San Juan had been ordered to a government clinic. She'd been seen by a doctor, and told that she'd need to have surgery. The reason for the surgery was never explained to her. Her permission was never asked for. She hadn't been sick. She'd been ordered, by doctors sent by the U.S. government, to have surgery. They were doctors. They were with the government. Of course she trusted their judgement. The next thing she knew, she was recovering from this mystery surgery that had left a large scar. The doctors told her not to climb stairs or lift anything heavy, and that she would be just fine. They hadn't told her anything else. They hadn't mentioned that her periods would stop, or that she'd never be able to have another child. They hadn't mentioned that they'd ripped her uterus out in a government-sanctioned effort to keep the women of Puerto Rico from breeding.

After her recovery, my grandmother noticed that her monthly period never returned.   She assumed her "change" had come early, and never connected this to the mystery surgery she'd been forced to undergo.She was just about 30 years old.

My father's mother was a simple woman. She never had the chance to go to school. She was a functional illiterate who could read and write her own name, and little else. She'd been raised to respect and fear authority. When a doctor, let alone a government doctor, told her she needed surgery, there was never any question about what would happen next.

What happened to Jovita was not an isolated incident. She was only one of thousands - possibly a million - women n Puerto Rico that this happened to.  It was part of a large-scale government eugenics program that continued in Puerto Rico well into the 1970s. It was part of the very war on women that seemed to be on hiatus for a while, but now seems to be back in full force.

I'm not writing about this to point out that this is just business as usual, and that there's no point trying to change it. I'm writing about this because it breaks my heart that my grandmother was victimized in this way, that her most basic rights were violated like this. I'm writing about this because it's 2012, and we're dangerously close to seeing this sort of thing happen AGAIN. Forcing a woman to be sterilized is no different than forcing a woman to carry to term a pregnancy that she doesn't want. They're both assaults on more than a woman's body, but on her personhood.

The people who say that the "war on women" is just a dramatic contrivance of the left are denying their own history. My mother made sure to tell us Jovita's story because we must make sure that story never be our story, too.  Hell, no.