When the Spirits Dance mambo: Growing Up Nuyorican in El Barrio
Marta Moreno Vega, 2003
Crown Publishing
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400049240
Summary
When rock and roll was transforming American culture in the 1950s and ’60s, East Harlem pulsed with the sounds of mambo and merengue.
Instead of Elvis and the Beatles, Marta Moreno Vega grew up worshipping Celia Cruz, Mario Bauza, and Arsenio Rodriguez. Their music could be heard on every radio in El Barrio and from the main stage at the legendary Palladium, where every weekend working-class kids dressed in their sharpest suits and highest heels and became mambo kings and queens.
Spanish Harlem was a vibrant and dynamic world, but it was also a place of constant change, where the traditions of Puerto Rican parents clashed with their children’s American ideals.
A precocious little girl with wildly curly hair, Marta was the baby of the family and the favorite of her elderly abuela, who lived in the apartment down the hall. Abuela Luisa was the spiritual center of the family, an espiritista who smoked cigars and honored the Afro-Caribbean deities who had always protected their family. But it was Marta’s brother, Chachito, who taught her the latest dance steps and called her from the pay phone at the Palladium at night so she could listen, huddled beneath the bedcovers, to the seductive rhythms of Tito Puente and his orchestra.
In this luminous and lively memoir, Marta Moreno Vega calls forth the spirit of Puerto Rican New York and the music, mysticism, and traditions of a remarkable and quintessentially American childhood. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1942
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., M.A., New York University; Ph.D., Temple University
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Marta Moreno Vega, Ph.D., has served as an assistant professor at the City University of New York's Baruch College. She is founder of the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute and Amigos del Museo del Barrio. She has curated major visual arts exhibitions, including "Santeria and Vodun in the Americas," and organized three international conferences on "Orisha Tradition and Culture. (From the publisher and Encyclopedia.com.)
Follow Dr. Vega on Facebook.
Book Reviews
In this vivid work..., two tales flawlessly merge: one recalls an Afro–Puerto Rican girl's upbringing in 1950s Spanish Harlem; the other explains the background for the author's eventual status as a priestess of the Santeria/Lucumi religion.... The spiritual and musical journey Vega takes readers on is informative and inspiring, even for the uninitiated
Publishers Weekly
(Adult/High School) Smart and perceptive, [Cotito] became a strong young woman, and worked steadily toward her goal of becoming a teacher..... While rejecting the negative, she embraced the many positive aspects of her heritage and the love of her family.... A vibrant, honest coming-of-age memoir that celebrates culture and community. —Sandy Freund, Richard Byrd Library, Fairfax County, VA
School Library Journal
Vega's passionate memoir of growing up in 1950s Spanish Harlem expresses both the burdens and joys of her Puerto Rican heritage.... [S]ome clunky phrasings ("Memories are the musical notes that form the composition of our souls") suggest that Vega's training in writing has been secondary to her work as a scholar and priestess of Santeria. Still, readers...will find the experiences limned here affecting. —Jennifer Mattson
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. Abuela tells Cotito the heartbreaking story of being rejected by her own mother because of her skin color. How has this tragedy, and the experience of being raised by her grandmother, Maria de la O, affected Abuela’s life and attitudes as an adult?
2. Cotito is fascinated by the photograph of her grandmother as a young woman, sailing alone to New York. In the photo, Abuela wears a borrowed dress, carries a borrowed suitcase, and watches her gorgeous country slide away from the hold of a ship built "like an enormous metal coffin." She describes this young Abuela as "the woman at the crossroads." In what ways is Cotito herself a young "woman at a crossroads"? What borrowed burdens does she carry, and which ones does she shed in the course of the memoir? What is her "coffin"?
3. What does the drama with Alma in the botanica teach Cotito about male/female relationships? How do the neighbors’ attitudes toward Alma contrast with Abuela’s approach? Why doesn’t Cotito question the strange events she witnesses that day?
4. When Papi decides to take the family to Rockaway Beach instead of their usual destination, Orchard Beach—nicknamed "the Puerto Rican Riviera"—Cotito suffers her first bout of self-hatred and embarrassment about her family’s ethnic ways. She is acutely aware of the spectacle they create by cooking on the beach while other families quietly enjoy "sandwiches neatly packed in plastic bags and picnic baskets with fruit." What defining moment does her meltdown lead to back at the apartment? How does it polarize the family?
5. What conflicting advice do Mami and Chachita give Cotito when she gets her first period? Do you agree with Chachita’s assessment that by keeping information at a minimum, Mami "just wants us to stay her babies. She’s trying to stop us from growing up"? Is it that simple?
6. Cotito receives mixed messages about love from her neighbors in El Barrio. When one man stalks his wife in a jealous rage, paranoid that she is cheating on him, Cotito concludes, "this, I supposed, was love." When Mami enrages Papi by taking driving lessons against his wishes, Cotito overhears her mother’s nervous telephone conversation with a friend: "‘He just loves me too much. That’s why he doesn’t want me to work or go out.’ The thrill in her voice suggested that somehow my father’s anger was an expression of his love." How does Cotito interpret these jarring lessons as she moves into young adulthood?
7. Cotito is repeatedly warned not to talk to Teresa, the neighborhood prostitute. Yet Teresa is summoned by all the neighborhood women when they require help with gowns, makeup, hairdressing, or anything uniquely feminine and presentational. How does this paradox reflect the conflicted way in which the women of El Barrio deal with their sexuality? Why does Teresa’s power over her own body frighten them? Why does Papi allow a prostitute to prepare his daughter for her wedding day?
8. How does the influx of drugs into El Barrio contribute to Abuela’s decline?
9. While Chachita struggles desperately against her parents’ attempt to determine her future for her, and ultimately caves in to their pressure, Cotito strikes out on her own with little resistance other than mild verbal sparring. Why are their experiences so different?
10. Chapter ten opens with: "There is a point in every life when a confluence of forces sets your destiny in motion." What are these events? How does Cotito’s acceptance to the Music and Art High School open her eyes to her mother’s repressed dreams? What gives her the strength to defy her mother’s wishes?
11. As Cotito approaches school for the very first time as a child, she is eager for everyone in El Barrio "to bear witness to how special I looked on my first day of school." How is her sense of pride challenged immediately upon arriving? How does this episode foreshadow her experience at the Music and Art High School years later?
12. Cotito is repeatedly struck by the contrasting ways in which her siblings’ budding sexuality is greeted by their parents. Mami and Papi "encouraged Chachito’s philandering," in part because it banishes any fear of homosexuality and in part because his robust manhood is a continual source of pride. Chachita, on the other hand, is violently castigated for her interest in the opposite sex: "It was as if, just in becoming a woman, she had wounded [Papi] with a knife." Do these conflicting attitudes toward young men and women still exist in the Puerto Rican community today?
13. Immersed in the power of music, Cotito experiences an epiphany about her future while attending a concert of Palladium greats at the Apollo along with her brother. What is this revelation? How does her experience of music differ from her brother’s? From Abuela’s? Are their three distinct experiences equally spiritual?
14. As a girl, Cotito’s ideal of womanhood is a composite of the seductive sensuality of Saint Marta la Dominadora, the powerful legs of Katherine Dunham, the enticing smile of Dorothy Dandridge, the piercing eyes of Abuela, and the sexy hauteur of her brother’s many girlfriends. What features of her own do you imagine the adult Marta Moreno Vega has added to this intoxicating mix?
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
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