Claritza Maldonado and the Boricua expression
Poetry analysis:Culture as a Form of Resistance
“salsa said todo everything papi ever wanted to say but couldn’t shape his mouth around the words to say it [..] learning that there is no such thing as too loud for us when all they ever wanted was for us to be quiet”
-How Papi’s Salsa Lengthened My Brown Spine
In her work Maldonado often accounts memories and personal experiences, as both the audience and herself come to realize that these accounts highlight the persistence of Puerto Ricans in the face of adversity. For instance in the piece above, once embarrassed by her father’s loud playing of salsa she now knows that persisting one’s culture in the face of white America is one of the most powerful forms of resistance against forced assimilation. The epiphany that there is no such thing as too loud, as they have always forced us to be quiet, is the acknowledgement of the generations of injustice enacted against the Puerto Rican people in an attempt to destroy culture while exploiting the land.
Ocean spelled M-A-M-I
“....someone referred to my mother as “Puerto Rican-American”..how could you hyphenate territory, hyphenate exploitation, how could you hyphenate the result of war, how could you hyphenate labor, and hyphenate a country-with-a-country not able to be its own..”
In this poem, Maldonado questions the term “Puerto Rican- American, stating that the hyphenation is redundant and builds a “false bridge”. She refers to the 1898 Spanish-American war as a cause of the hyphenation, when the U.S invaded Puerto Rico and took over their territory. Since Puerto Rico became U.S territory, Puerto Ricans have been U.S citizens so to say Puerto Rican-American is redundant; to “hyphenate a country within a country”. They [white America] just want to differentiate between “Americans” and “Puerto Rican-Americans” so they can know how to unfairly cut pieces of the pie unequally when distributing resources, rights, and money to its “citizens”.
