Growing Up a Jewish Puerto Rican Latina
My mother was a working-class Puerto Rican woman born in Harlem in New York City, USA. My father was a Ukrainian Jew born in Brooklyn, New York, USA. They were communists. They met at age eighteen and were married when they were almost twenty. They were strong allies to each other, and they each taught their children about the other’s heritage.
My mother was targeted with racism in New York City. She was accused of cheating when she did well on a paper. She got beat up by Irish and Italian young people and early on found her allies among Jews. Her lighter-skinned mother had to be the one who applied for apartments.
When my father graduated from college in 1951, because of his political beliefs no one would hire him in his field of mathematical biology. The Korean war had just broken out, and he and my mother decided to move to Puerto Rico to get to know my mother’s country and have some time together in case my father was jailed for refusing to fight in the war. They were also prevented from working in Puerto Rico. On advice from an elder, they bought land so they could at least feed themselves. That is the land I now live on.
My parents were consciously anti-racist and feminist, although it took time for my father to understand how sexism showed up [was enacted] in our home. I was the first child and was always encouraged to use my mind and pursue my interests. I was in Puerto Rico from when I was born until age five, in New York from age two to seven (my family went back and forth a few times), and in Puerto Rico from age seven to thirteen. Then we moved to Chicago, Illinois, USA. The period of age seven to thirteen was the core of my childhood and shaped much of my sense of identity. I lived in the United States from 1967 to 2019. I moved back to the farm in late 2019.
I was aware of class. We had electricity, a cistern, and a water pump while my friends used kerosene lamps and hauled water from a spring down the hill. I was called americanita [little American] even though my mother was Puerto Rican. I had an insider-outsider life. I was aware of “colorism” and sexism in the community. My best friend and I were the only girls who wore pants or climbed trees. There was a lot of domestic violence and early pregnancy, which is partly why we left Puerto Rico when I was thirteen.
I encountered intense racism as a Puerto Rican when we moved to Chicago. I was called names and accused of bringing cockroaches with me. The women’s liberation movement was exploding into life, along with Black power and Chicano/a movements. I was the youngest member of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, which my mother was also in.
Growing up in Puerto Rico, and ever since, I have found it hard that there is no such thing as Jewish Latino/a people. The assumption is that all Latino/a people are Catholic or at least Christian and that all Jews are white.
Maricao, Puerto Rico
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of Latinos/as and Chicanos/as
(Present Time 206, January 2022)