THE BEGINNING
It all started with a picture.
Box of my first shipment of Goya products.
No, not this one, but I don’t have access to the photo that inspired this journey of heritage and language and family. At least, not yet.
When I was about 8 or 9, I noticed an old sepia photo on my parents’ dresser. The man and woman in the photo had dark hair and eyes, but only the woman in the photo smiled. Based on the suit and white dress from the picture, I knew it was a wedding photo. I later found out that these were my grandparents (Dad’s side), both dead before I was born and one dead before Dad reached adulthood.
This photo always left me feeling disoriented. I look a lot like my Grandma Ramona, and my dad reminds me of this often. It felt so odd to me to look so similar to someone yet know nothing about them. In many ways, it left me at odds with myself; I was a girl raised gringa in the PNW, and I was Puerto Rican. Am Puerto Rican. Without any of the cultural markers.
I didn’t know how to be. Didn’t know how both truths could be true at the same time without making me some sort of imposter in one way or another.
Castillo San Felipe del Morro in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Photo by Stephanie Klepacki on Unsplash.
Everything I knew about my Grandma Ramona and Grandpa Natividad was told to me by my dad. I had never met any of my aunts on that side of the family, and I only spoke with my uncle a handful of times. As I got older and more curious, I decided to explore more intentionally.
The picture on this post is the perfect representation of my exploration. Since I started researching, I have:
Found my grandpa’s draft card.
Traced my grandma’s family back a couple hundred years.
Met cousins I didn’t know I had.
Built a relationship with an aunt I didn’t know I had.
Refreshed on some Spanish.
Memorized a few family recipes.
The picture of boxed ingredients was from my first shipment of Puerto Rican spices and pastes I needed to cook my first recipe (post to come). Because I live in the PNW, and thus very far from Puerto Rico, I have to order ingredients like sofrito, reciato, sazon, and adobo online. As I would soon find out, I would practically live on the internet over the next few months. There was a lot I needed online to find out what happened to my family and why things turned out the way they did.
This blog will be a space to record my findings, to share my learning, and to explore what it means to be Puerto Rican and a mixed Latina. This blog will also include some reflections about my journey to becoming an author. You’ll just have to stay tuned to find out what that actually ends up looks like.
Thank you for reading this introduction post, and I look forward to your continued following as I figure myself out.
Be sure to follow me on Instagram and Twitter @writessalazar for more!
