[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] Alyssa Oursler (Electrical Literature) writes that Robert Lopez’s e-book Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere explores the lack of his household’s tradition and language. Listed below are excerpts from her interview with Lopez.
A century in the past, Robert Lopez’s grandfather Sixto left Puerto Rico for Brooklyn. Puerto Rico would have been a U.S. territory for many years at that time. “In principle, Sixto wasn’t an immigrant,” Lopez writes in his new e-book Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere: An American Story of Assimilation and Erasure, “however after all he was.”
Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere is a set of quick essays illustrating the ramifications of assimilation and the best way amnesia, at any scale, is troublesome to see till it’s not, at which level you see it in all places. “What’s lacking isn’t simply a part of the story,” Lopez tells us. “It is the story.”
Lopez’s nonfiction debut is easy in kind however chock-full of complexity: his fragmented household historical past is sprinkled with loss and longing and parades and boxing bouts and tennis matches and myths and misquotes and vaporous recollections. Lopez feels his lack of household lore is one thing elementary he’s lacking, not in contrast to correct tennis footwork, although he manages to compete with out it. “Perhaps I’d have a greater forehand if I spoke Spanish,” he quips.
In telling his household’s story, Lopez is, in some sense, telling this nation’s story. The historical past of the USA is brimming with erasure—each actively (a founding dependent upon displacement and genocide) and passively (by way of what’s neglected within the tales we inform). “That I used to be born Puerto Rican was happenstance, however that I’ve no connection to what it means is not any accident,” Lopez concludes. Put one other approach: What’s extra American than forgetting?
Lopez and I related to debate assimilation, language, sports activities, and American tradition.
Alyssa Oursler: In Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere, you chronicle your loved ones’s “profitable” migration and assimilation to the USA whereas reflecting on all that was misplaced within the course of. Why is “profitable assimilation” an oxymoron—and why did now really feel just like the time to jot down a e-book about that reality?
Robert Lopez: Assimilating into an adopted tradition is the right and respectful factor to do except the assimilation consists of some type of repudiation or denial of 1’s native tradition and id. One ought to attempt to assimilate if one decides to reside out of the country. Why select that place except you’re and invested within the language and tradition of your new house? This could apply to everybody in each route. However one needn’t deny the heritage left behind.
The e-book was began over the past administration and their draconian immigration insurance policies. After which seeing the response to Hurricane Maria …. Nicely, if not then … [. . .]
AO: You focus on police violence within the e-book. Whereas your pal who was killed by police was white, I’m curious to listen to your ideas on the connection between racialized police violence and assimilation/erasure.
RL: After all, racialized police violence is heinous and an issue that must be addressed. However after we focus an excessive amount of on race, we’re lacking the overarching (fixable) problem in play right here, which is the militarization of police all through the nation. The cops who beat Tyre Nichols to loss of life in Memphis had been all Black, too. Was there a racial element on this case? Maybe. Maybe, although, too many cops and the tradition of “policing” on this nation is the issue and we have to eliminate them and change them with a brand new breed of police who’re skilled to truly defend and serve communities slightly than brutalize and kill folks. Calls to “finish racism,” whereas effectively intentioned and a worthwhile objective, are futile. It’s like saying “finish stupidity.” There’s no approach to accomplish it. [. . .]
AO: You provide a number of pointed, albeit temporary, descriptions of the whitewashed suburban areas you had been raised in. How do you suppose the bodily actuality (or, in your phrases, “architectural atrocities”) of the suburbs encourages and/or is dependent upon erasure?
Aesthetic magnificence or great thing about any type doesn’t play an element in our day-to-day lives. All of those areas and these attitudes promote and propagate a homogenous tradition whereby all of us grow to be the identical no matter our disparate backgrounds. We’re all customers. So, even when the strip mall has a Mexican restaurant subsequent to a Center Jap restaurant subsequent to a barbeque joint, all of it feels the identical. One would suppose there can be an acceptance or celebration of the person cultures inside these locations, however that hasn’t been my expertise. The erasure is in all places within the suburbs of New York Metropolis, particularly. [. . .]
AO: The e-book is made up of quick essays with quick paragraphs but covers super floor. Are you able to converse to the connection between the cadence of the e-book and its topic?
RL: Like so many people on this fashionable world, I see and expertise the whole lot in fragments. Initially, this e-book began as a collection of braided essays, however then it morphed right into a e-book size piece with fragments and diversions in any variety of instructions, however at all times tying into what the e-book goes after. I like your use of the phrase cadence as a result of that’s at all times of paramount concern when assembling a e-book. Modulation makes the medication go down, so to talk. Wanting inside and with out, wanting backwards and forwards, and every kind of alternate side-angles, was vital in placing this e-book collectively. [. . .]
For the complete article, see https://electricliterature.com/robert-lopez-dispatches-from-puerto-nowhere-an-american-story-of-assimilation-and-erasure
The e-book:
Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere: An American Story of Assimilation and Erasure
Robert Lopez
Two Greenback Radio, March 2023
280 pages
ISBN 978-1953387240 (hc)
E-book evaluation:
Flashes, Disconnections and Missed Connections: An Interview with Robert Lopez Concerning His New E-book, “Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere”
Daniel A. Olivas, Latino E-book Evaluation, April 2, 2023
https://www.latinobookreview.com/flashes-disconnections-and-missed-connections-an-interview-with-robert-lopez-regarding-his-new-book-dispatches-from-puerto-nowhere–latino-book-review.html
[Photo above by J. Amill Santiago.]