A Writer’s Journey
- afrodescendenciaup
- Feb 6
- 2 min read
I write first and foremost because the stories I grew up reading in school, those I watched on television and in the movies, bore no resemblance to the world of my family or my community. Those stories did not tell about the lines in my grandmother’s face or the smell on my abuelo’s skin when he came home from the cane fields. Nowhere did I see my family’s many shades of brown or the sound of my mother’s voice when she called me mamita. I write because my teachers insisted on my becoming American with a capital A and refused to recognize my Puertorriqueña with a capital P. I write because the images my ancestors leave me in my sleep will not allow me to be silent.
Those ancestors were never allowed a public voice. Their stories lived in the intimacy of their balcones, danced in the banter under the mango tree, and hovered in the air over a game of dominos. Those stories were never acknowledged, much less allowed entry into the salons and stages of the world of the white elite.
Those very images are my most treasured legacy. I claim the voices of those ancestral storytellers who continue to visit me in my dreams and in my meditations. I am an antenna receiving and transmitting those images to you, my reader. My voice has taken those stories from the barrios of Carolina to a San Juan where they were never invited, and beyond. From silences and erasures of yesterday, those stories have now grown beyond borders, speak in other languages and reach the eyes and ears of those who recognize themselves in my words.
I write because those ancestral images will not allow me to be silent. I write to give voice and face to lives that were never acknowledged, recorded, or even recognized. I write for my family, for our youth and our community, for our survival. I write for my own sanity and my ability to say finally and unequivocally, this is who we are and this is where we come from. I invite you to take us in and celebrate our beauty.
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