Our Otherness Is Our Strength by Andrea Navedo

Author:Andrea Navedo [Navedo, Andrea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SEL021000 Self-Help / Motivational & Inspirational, OCC019000 Body, Mind & Spirit / Inspiration & Personal Growth, BIO002030 Biography & Autobiography - Cultural, Ethnic & Regional - Hispanic & Latino
Publisher: Fortress Press

“A person without the knowledge of their past ­history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.”

~Marcus Garvey

Discover Your Roots

My mother grew up in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, which wasn’t a time of Puerto Rican flag waving and cultural pride like we’re experiencing now. It was just the opposite. She was told that she was a greasy dirty spic. Speaking Spanish outside of the home was an embarrassment. Assimilating into American culture was the goal. I’m sure many of you have family with similar experiences and know what I am talking about.

I grew up in a mostly Black and Latino neighborhood. I knew that I was Puerto Rican but didn’t know what that meant. Puerto Rico was a far-off island in someplace called the Caribbean where they spoke Spanish. I had a grandmother who lived there, Grandma Benny, but I never saw her. My other grandmother, my mother’s mother, Grandma Iris, spoke Spanish, but she also spoke English with an accent. My mom mostly spoke in English, but when she got frustrated she was very fluent in Spanish curse words. We ate Puerto Rican food on Sundays when we visited Grandma Iris. It was at her house where we usually had “house parties.” Back then a house party was a spontaneous slapped-together gathering of family and friends. Nothing fancy, just lots of home-cooked food, wine, beer, and music playing on the record player. Lots of dancing, laughing, drinking, and smoking. It was the 1970s and salsa music was all the rage in the clubs. So was Michael Jackson. My grandmother, who is ninety-nine years old now, God bless her soul, was the life of the party. I have so many memories of her full-of-life energy. One vivid memory is of her dancing her butt off, with a straw jibaro (farmer) hat that said “Puerto Rico” on the front and a can of Budweiser in one of her hands. I would stare at her admiringly and think what a cool grandmother I had. No granny knitting in a rocking chair here. Grandma Iris was a full-of-life woman who was very in touch with her sexuality and had no shame about it. I recall, at one of our house parties when I was about five years old, the music was pumping, the place was packed, and I was dancing in the crowd. Grandma Iris was drinking a beer and watching me. She called me over and in her Spanish accent said, “Andrea, mira, let me tell ju somsing, ju are a girl and girls have to be sexy. Mira, when ju dancing, yu gotta move jour hips like dis,” and proceeded to show me how to shake my hips.

“Like this grandma?” I asked, doing my best to imitate her sexy womanly moves.

“Jes mama, dats it. Move those hips, mueve la colita.” It’s a great memory and to this day I can proudly say I move my hips sexy like a girl!

That was the extent of what

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