In 1991 I started graduate school in order to research and write a "medicinal" history of Puerto Rican women and our kin, a history that would uproot the toxic mythology of a sexist, racist, classist colonialism that demeaned us. I wanted to write a version of our past that drew forth the truth of our courage, resilience and resourcefulness, that documented some of the millions ways we have always resisted being dehumanized. I also wanted to write a book that was accessible and beautiful, that used the power of poetry to communicate about our collective past.
Remedios is written in short poetic prose pieces,. It begins 200,000 years ago, with the First Mother in Sub-Saharan Africa, and goes all the way to the year of my birth, 1954.
With the collapse of South End Press in 2014, Remedios went out of print. I am very pleased to be publishing a second edition, with a new introduction, in the Fall of 2018.
Remedios is written in short poetic prose pieces,. It begins 200,000 years ago, with the First Mother in Sub-Saharan Africa, and goes all the way to the year of my birth, 1954.
With the collapse of South End Press in 2014, Remedios went out of print. I am very pleased to be publishing a second edition, with a new introduction, in the Fall of 2018.
1515: Plátano
Would you believe there was a time when we had no tostones? Plátano didn't start out being Puerto Rican any more than spaghetti was originally Italian! Marco Polo brought spaghetti home from China and plátano went from Malaysia to East Africa with the Indonesians and to West Africa with the Portuguese and when they found out how many slaves you could feed just enough to keep them going on guineo verde and plátano...¡mija! Se lo trajeron enseguida. Fíjate. One of those traveling priests brought the first plátano to the banks of the Toa in 1515. You know they still grow plenty of it in the hills around Toa Alta, Orocovis, Naranjito. So who invented the first toston? Slaves, por supuesto. The patrón throws down a sack of guineos y plátanos and says, "This is your food for the week." So the first day it's boiled. The second day it's boiled and mashed. The third day...boiled. One of the women says, basta ya! Gets a little grease from somewhere throws in a bit of garlic and fries it up--but the inside stays too raw, so she slams it with the palm of her hand, throws it back in the pot, y en un dos por tres everyone's eating tostones. On Saturday, the patrón brings them some salt pork for Sunday and someone invents mofongo. Soon they have a whole cuisine going. It doesn't win any prizes for good nutrition, because that's not a slaveholder thing, but making sabrosura out of empty calories is an act of resistance, and soul food is damn good medicine. 
|
from Revision
Let's get one thing straight. Puerto Rico was a women's country. Female head of household is not a new thing with us. The men left for Mexico and Venezuela and Peru. They left every which way they could, and they left us behind. We got our own rice and beans. Our own guineo verde and cornmeal. Whatever there was to be cooked, we cooked it. Whoever was born, we birthed and raised them. Whatever was to be washed, we washed it. We washed the ore the men dug from the mountains, rinsed a thousand baskets of crushed rock. We stood knee deep in the rivers separating gold from sand, and still cooked supper. We washed cotton shirts and silk capes, diapers and menstrual cloths, dress shirts and cleaning rags. We squatted by the river and pounded clothing on rocks. Whatever was grown, we grew it. We planted the food and harvested it. We pushed the cane into the teeth of the trapiche, and stripped the tobacco leaf from the stem. We coaxed the berries from the coffee branch, and sorted them, washed them, dried them, shelled them, roasted them, ground them, made the coffee and served it. We were never still, our hands were always busy. Making soap. Making candles. Holding children. Making bedding. Sewing clothing. Our stitches held sleeve to dress and soul to body. We stitched our families through the dead season of the cane, stitched them through lean times of bread and coffee. The seams we made kept us from freezing in the winters of New York, and put beans on the table in the years of soup kitchens. Puerto Rican women have always held up four fifths of the sky. Ours is the work they decided to call unwork. The tasks as necessary as air. Not a single thing they did could have been done without us. Not a treasure taken. Not a crop brought in. Not a town built up around it's plaza, not a fortress manned without our cooking, cleaning, sewing, laundering, childbearing. We have always been here, doing what had to be done. As reliable as furniture, as supportive as their favorite sillón. Who thanks his bed? But we are not furniture. We are full of fire, dreams, pain, subversive laughter. How could they not honor us? We were always here, working eating, sleeping, singing, suffering, giving birth, dying. We were out of their sight, cutting wood, making fire, soaking beans, nursing babies. We were right there beside them digging, hoeing, weeding, picking, cutting, stacking. Twisting wires, packing piña, shaping pills, filling thermometers with poisonous metal, typing memo after memo. Not one meal was ever eaten without our hand on the pot. Not one office ran for an hour without our ear to the phone, our finger to the keyboard. Not one of those books that ignore us could have been written without our shopping, baking, mending, ironing, typing, making coffee, comforting. Without our caring for the children, minding the store, getting in the crop, making their businesses pay. This is our story, and the truth of our lives will overthrow them. |