Writer. Editor. Researcher.
Smartypants.
Since I could hold a crayon, I've been chronicling the lives of people that poke my curiosities. I was the kid who spent summers playing Scrabble the way others played stickball. After undergrad at Sarah Lawrence, I wrote snarky essays about gay rights or political shenanigans, just for myself. When I was awarded the fancy-pants Dean's Nonfiction Fellowship to Columbia University's MFA, I wanted to write sharper smartassery. But I realized I'm better than that.
My grandfather was a builder of the Panama Canal. He died in Panamá when I was a two-year-old New Yorker..
Who determines history?
This question has been like a car alarm in my head as I've been sleuthing through my family's stories. Why is the work of the researcher with a brand-name degree valued more than the recollections of people who were present as that history was happening to them? My fam lived through racism and prejudice in the Caribbean, Jim Crow in Panamá, and NY as new Americans. A doctor and future Panamanian president delivered my twin aunt and uncle in a Canal Zone Hospital. As president during WWII, he campaigned to deport anyone who wasn't a "native Panamanian," including people like my tia and tio whom he delivered. My great-uncle was the oldest tailor in Panamá, working into his 90s. His shop is a national landmark. Skills he taught my father enabled Dad to avoid the front lines of Korea as a soldier in the 1950s.
In our Histories, I found love for those in my bloodline, who were dust before I was a thought.
I come from generations
of storytellers.
I am both researcher and kin.
In Where There is Pride in Belonging you'll have Sunday dinner at my parents' kitchen table, among my people. Savor Mom's plantains and curried shrimp. Laugh and wonder while absorbing the bitter and sweet oral narratives of my multigenerational Canal family. From Panamá to New York and across the U.S., WTIPIB is a scrapbook of making history, empire, and family devotion.
Where There is Pride in Belonging
will be my first book!