This sentimiento...
Although I have managed to live in Puerto Rico for the past seven years - and I was raised in Toa Baja until my 13th birthday - I can not honestly say that I do not belong here.
I share this sentimiento with most of my closest friends, even with those who have never lived outside of the island. Weird, you might say...Well, I say it's sad.
For many of these artists/poets/creative beings, Puerto Rico's scence is too institutional, too egotistical, stale.
Yes, there are wonderful creative pockets in Santurce and Río Piedras. Yes, the research centers at the University of Puerto Rico (without cops) are almost always available. Yes: the Carnegie Library is not as reliable. No: Old San Juan is a tourist trap. Yes, nature heals us, even if we don't realize it...Yes, people get married, have kids, are unemployed and angry. (Let's not forget that the unemployment rate is as alarming as the daily killings.)
But when you happen to feel like an outsider, it doesn't really matter the size of the pocket. Aflter all, its rare to find another Puerto Rican from New York around here.
This is Puerto Rico/21st century. Sterile. Family & Residential-oriented. Stuffed with stereotypes & fundamentalists. Mediocre & Ingenious. Corrupt. With great potential.
Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza, by Gloria Anzaldúa has helped me reflect upon the feelings of not belonging to the country where I was born. While doing so, I have also learned a lot about the parallel struggles lead by Chicanos/as and Boricuas.
As she explains "...Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper class touch, where the sepace between two individuals shrinks with intimacy".
Un chin:
Page 93: "I write the myths in me, the myths I am, the myths I want to become. The word, the image and the feeling have a palpable energy, a kind of power."
page 94: "Writing produces anxiety. Looking inside myself and my experience, looking at my conflicts, engenders anxiety in me. Being a writer feels very much like being a Chicana, or being queer- a lot of squirming, coming up against all sorts of wall. Or its opposite: nothing defined or definite, a boundless, floating state of limbo where I kick my heels, brood, percolate, hibernate and wait for something to happen."
page 95: "When I write it feels like I'm carving bone. It feels like I'm creating my own face, my own heart - a Nahuatl concept." (This line reminds me of Nieves art!)
This book is a precious stone para mi altar.
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