I set out to experience one day as a tourist in Puerto Rico, the only place I have ever lived. If you read the essay I shared in my previous blog post, you will understand why feeling like an outsider is nothing new to me, and entering this tourist project I already had an idea of what to expect. Having been taught English as my first language by my mother, who is from the United States, I spent most of my life speaking English everywhere I went, leading many strangers to assume that I was not from here in the first place.
I decided to go to the beach in Condado, because it is an area filled with many hotels, and the small beach I visited is directly behind a hotel. First, I got a coffee in the hotel's Starbucks, where, expectedly, they had no problem attending me in English. After swimming for a while in the beach, I decided to ask around about where I should eat. I asked various people for recommendations on where to get some good "local food". Of the answers I recieved, one in particular stuck out to me. One man I asked suggested to me a place where I could get the "best chuleta in town". I am vegetarian, and then informed him of that fact. His facial expression inmediately changed, from friendly and helpful to sceptic and judgemental. "How are you going to enjoy our cultural food if you do not eat a chuleta? or an alcapurria de jueyes?" He continued by pulling out some of the much used arguments I have heard so many times before, as to why humans aren't supposed to be vegetarian and other such things, and to avoid an argument I silently let him rant a bit, looked at my phone, muttered some excuse about the time, and went on my way. I asked some other person about where to go, this time adding in the "by the way, I'm vegetarian" before letting them answer, and they suggested a place in Old San Juan called Café Berlin, where they told me I could get a good vegetarian mofongo; I had actually never had mofongo before, because it is usually filled with meat or seafood, so I decided that was the best option.
The waiter at the restaurant (as I had seen many times before when I was young, when I would go out to eat with my mother) seemed discreetly annoyed by having to attend a tourist, but covered it well enough with their best English, and by trying to be extra friendly. The discomfort I saw in the waiter was subtle enough that maybe a real tourist may not have even noticed it. Upon thinking about it, I wondered if I was just imagining it, or if I noticed this little difference in the waiters gaze and attitude because I myself have felt similar feelings towards ignorant visitors of my home island. I could not help but to keep pondering about if my suspicion was true, or if I was assuming things based on my own feelings about tourists, as I waited for my food. After eating (and leaving a good tip) I went home.
There are two things that left me thinking a lot about this day. The first being that customer service workers who work in tourist areas must either be really fine with interacting with those kinds of people, or be really good at putting on customer service poker face. The other thing is that people (particularly ones who are not obligated to put up with you through their work) are very quick to defend the use of all things that are a part of their culture, and to judge you for not wanting and/or accepting them. The man acting personally concerned that I could not eat a chuleta is a good example, but in my youth I also encountered many people who became either utterly concerned or seemingly personally insulted by the fact that I had lived here my whole life, and could not comfortably speak Spanish. It has always been complicated to confront these types of people, but it is not hard for me to understand their perspective. Language and food are two vital elements that contribute to people's ethnic and cultural identities, and someone rejecting a part of one's identity is enough to make anyone a bit defensive.
Monday, May 14, 2018
Sunday, May 13, 2018
Me and my "home"
There are many aspects of my personality that leave me a bit isolated or rejected from the place I consider my home. Here is an reflection/essay I wrote exploring a small bit of these issues I encounter relating to my identity, and my feeling of home.
Angela M. Ortega Iannelli
Prof. Cynthia Pittman
INGL 3135-002
5 April 2018
About “Home”
For my whole life, I have had issues with the concept of “home”. It is not because I
am unhappy with where I live, but because other people from the island have trouble
accepting that their home is indeed my home as well. This is because I neither look nor sound
anything like them. Peter Roberts says in The Roots of Caribbean Identity: Language, Race
and Ecology, that “While behavior may in some objective way be the best criterion for
judging sameness, it is the senses of sight (color/race) and sound (language) that provided the
initial and usually most deep-seated conclusions about sameness and difference in identity.”
(p. 5) However, due to my particular circumstance, I agree with the perspective, also from
Roberts’ book, that “...home embodies a psychological factor of attachment, which probably
issues from the basic animal instinct of territoriality, but is more an emotional bond created
through experience of a place.”(p. 1) So, to me, even though I have not physically lived on
every part of the island, this whole island feels like “home”.
I have lived in Puerto Rico my entire life, but every time I meet someone new, I get
the question “So, where are you from?” and when I reply with the statement that I am from
here, it is always met with either “Oh, but you were raised out there (referring to the states),
right?” or “Oh, but you have an accent!” at which point it is necessary to explain how I was
raised, an explanation I repeat so much it comes to me almost automatically, adding more or
less details depending on who I am talking to, but the entire story is the following: My
mother is from the United States, and taught me English first. She homeschooled me until
2
seventh grade, so I was never obligated to actually speak Spanish, (even though I could read,
write, and understand most spoken Spanish) and in seventh grade I was enrolled in a bilingual
school, where I made sure to make friends with English speaking children, and avoided
speaking Spanish to my teachers as much as I could. I only really started speaking Spanish
regularly in university, resulting in my accent. Here is where my concept of “home” becomes
problematic. Roberts, in the aforementioned work of his, explained how people tend to feel
that their home is where they feel comfortable, and feel accompanied by people who are “like
them”. Besides my accent in Spanish, and my unusually natural sounding English, I also look
quite foreign to other Puerto Ricans, because my father is from Peru, so I have inherited a
face structure, and skin tone that look pretty South American. So, I sometimes even receive
the “Where are you from?” from strangers before I have even uttered a single word. Even
though Puerto Ricans have a varied ethnic mash-up just from the nature of our twice
colonized history, somehow they seem to all have some sort of trait in common that allows
them to all feel the same, and feel at home with each other. “The perception of sameness
logically implies the perception of difference, which in turn implies that those who are
perceived as different are treated differently”. (Roberts, p. 3) Meaning that I, who somehow
look and sound different from this vague idea of Puerto Rican “sameness”, often get treated
different. Also, many people have tried to insist upon me, once they learn that my parents are
not from here, that I am not Puerto Rican; this always causes a somewhat heated discussion.
You see, if I were to go to Peru, I might be mistaken for a local, until I start to speak my
strangely accented, and relatively slow Spanish that is filled with Puerto Rican
colloquialisms. On the other hand, if I were to go to my mother’s birth-city of Philadelphia, it
wouldn’t matter how well my English is, even possibly having an accent similar to theirs,
they could take one look at me, and assume I am Mexican or of some other ethnicity of
3
stereotypically tanned skin. In either of these places that some people might consider I am
“from”, I would be singled out, and maybe even excluded; I certainly would not feel “at
home”. Then again, here, on my beautiful island that I am so emotionally attached to, and
consider my home, I am also singled out, and sometimes to a certain extent excluded. I am
constantly facing situations, and people who do not make me feel “at home” at all. I love
Puerto Rico, it is beautiful, it is unique ecologically, historically, and politically, and it is the
only place I have ever lived. I feel an attachment to the whole island in general, because my
family has always moved around from apartment to apartment so I have not ever felt one
building, or house, as being more homely than any other.
As I mentioned before, I feel “home” has a lot to do, as described by Roberts, with
psychological and emotional attachment, and I am certainly very attached to Puerto Rico.
There is a famous poem written by a Nuyorican writer, Juan Antonio Corretjer, called
Boricua en la luna. The last line, which is the most famous part, says: “Y así le grito al
villano: / yo sería borincano / aunque naciera en la luna.” Which translates to “And this is
how I scream to the villain: / I would be ‘borincano’ / even if I was born on the moon.”
(“Borincano” meaning Puerto Rican; Borikén was the name of the island pre-colonization).
Although I was not born off the island like Corretjer was, this line has always had a lot of
meaning to me. When people from my island intentionally, or unknowingly make me feel
excluded, and less at home, I remind myself of that phrase. I often think that, no matter where
I end up living in the future, even if I end up living off of the planet, my heart is “borincano”;
Puerto Rico will always be “home”.
4
Works Cited
Corretjer, Juan Antonio. Boricua en la luna. Luis Lopez Nieves. Ciudad Seva.
http://ciudadseva.com/texto/boricua-en-la-luna/
Roberts, Peter. The Roots of Caribbean Identity: Language, Race and Ecology. New York:
Cambridge U.P., 2008. 1-5.
http://nicenet.org/ICA/class/document_show.cfm?document_id=2183541
Angela M. Ortega Iannelli
Prof. Cynthia Pittman
INGL 3135-002
5 April 2018
About “Home”
For my whole life, I have had issues with the concept of “home”. It is not because I
am unhappy with where I live, but because other people from the island have trouble
accepting that their home is indeed my home as well. This is because I neither look nor sound
anything like them. Peter Roberts says in The Roots of Caribbean Identity: Language, Race
and Ecology, that “While behavior may in some objective way be the best criterion for
judging sameness, it is the senses of sight (color/race) and sound (language) that provided the
initial and usually most deep-seated conclusions about sameness and difference in identity.”
(p. 5) However, due to my particular circumstance, I agree with the perspective, also from
Roberts’ book, that “...home embodies a psychological factor of attachment, which probably
issues from the basic animal instinct of territoriality, but is more an emotional bond created
through experience of a place.”(p. 1) So, to me, even though I have not physically lived on
every part of the island, this whole island feels like “home”.
I have lived in Puerto Rico my entire life, but every time I meet someone new, I get
the question “So, where are you from?” and when I reply with the statement that I am from
here, it is always met with either “Oh, but you were raised out there (referring to the states),
right?” or “Oh, but you have an accent!” at which point it is necessary to explain how I was
raised, an explanation I repeat so much it comes to me almost automatically, adding more or
less details depending on who I am talking to, but the entire story is the following: My
mother is from the United States, and taught me English first. She homeschooled me until
2
seventh grade, so I was never obligated to actually speak Spanish, (even though I could read,
write, and understand most spoken Spanish) and in seventh grade I was enrolled in a bilingual
school, where I made sure to make friends with English speaking children, and avoided
speaking Spanish to my teachers as much as I could. I only really started speaking Spanish
regularly in university, resulting in my accent. Here is where my concept of “home” becomes
problematic. Roberts, in the aforementioned work of his, explained how people tend to feel
that their home is where they feel comfortable, and feel accompanied by people who are “like
them”. Besides my accent in Spanish, and my unusually natural sounding English, I also look
quite foreign to other Puerto Ricans, because my father is from Peru, so I have inherited a
face structure, and skin tone that look pretty South American. So, I sometimes even receive
the “Where are you from?” from strangers before I have even uttered a single word. Even
though Puerto Ricans have a varied ethnic mash-up just from the nature of our twice
colonized history, somehow they seem to all have some sort of trait in common that allows
them to all feel the same, and feel at home with each other. “The perception of sameness
logically implies the perception of difference, which in turn implies that those who are
perceived as different are treated differently”. (Roberts, p. 3) Meaning that I, who somehow
look and sound different from this vague idea of Puerto Rican “sameness”, often get treated
different. Also, many people have tried to insist upon me, once they learn that my parents are
not from here, that I am not Puerto Rican; this always causes a somewhat heated discussion.
You see, if I were to go to Peru, I might be mistaken for a local, until I start to speak my
strangely accented, and relatively slow Spanish that is filled with Puerto Rican
colloquialisms. On the other hand, if I were to go to my mother’s birth-city of Philadelphia, it
wouldn’t matter how well my English is, even possibly having an accent similar to theirs,
they could take one look at me, and assume I am Mexican or of some other ethnicity of
3
stereotypically tanned skin. In either of these places that some people might consider I am
“from”, I would be singled out, and maybe even excluded; I certainly would not feel “at
home”. Then again, here, on my beautiful island that I am so emotionally attached to, and
consider my home, I am also singled out, and sometimes to a certain extent excluded. I am
constantly facing situations, and people who do not make me feel “at home” at all. I love
Puerto Rico, it is beautiful, it is unique ecologically, historically, and politically, and it is the
only place I have ever lived. I feel an attachment to the whole island in general, because my
family has always moved around from apartment to apartment so I have not ever felt one
building, or house, as being more homely than any other.
As I mentioned before, I feel “home” has a lot to do, as described by Roberts, with
psychological and emotional attachment, and I am certainly very attached to Puerto Rico.
There is a famous poem written by a Nuyorican writer, Juan Antonio Corretjer, called
Boricua en la luna. The last line, which is the most famous part, says: “Y así le grito al
villano: / yo sería borincano / aunque naciera en la luna.” Which translates to “And this is
how I scream to the villain: / I would be ‘borincano’ / even if I was born on the moon.”
(“Borincano” meaning Puerto Rican; Borikén was the name of the island pre-colonization).
Although I was not born off the island like Corretjer was, this line has always had a lot of
meaning to me. When people from my island intentionally, or unknowingly make me feel
excluded, and less at home, I remind myself of that phrase. I often think that, no matter where
I end up living in the future, even if I end up living off of the planet, my heart is “borincano”;
Puerto Rico will always be “home”.
4
Works Cited
Corretjer, Juan Antonio. Boricua en la luna. Luis Lopez Nieves. Ciudad Seva.
http://ciudadseva.com/texto/boricua-en-la-luna/
Roberts, Peter. The Roots of Caribbean Identity: Language, Race and Ecology. New York:
Cambridge U.P., 2008. 1-5.
http://nicenet.org/ICA/class/document_show.cfm?document_id=2183541
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