Black Issues Book Review – Cultural Crossings Column
March 2001; used with permission

Same Trip, Different Ships
By Milca Esdaille

Authors Julia Alvarez, Junot Díaz and Loida Maritza Pérez talk about their distinctive Dominican heritage and their common cultural roots with African Americans

"Community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist ... it is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish."

--Audre Lorde, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House"

On cold, gray Bronx mornings, I often ache for the warm riot of colors of my Dominican Republic: miles of brilliant, blue-green ocean, fiery oranges and vivid greens in open-air markets, pastels brightening both glorious and hauntingly dilapidated houses. But the colors I love most are on the faces of mi gente--a rainbow palate ranging from deep ebonies, through golden bronzes, to the fairest of alabasters. Dominicans are a blend of the indigenous Taino Indians, the colonizing Spaniards and the Africans brought in chains to work the sugar plantations. Yet our claim to the Taino bloodline is as tenuous as it is ardent: by the mid-1500s only 500 Tainos had survived the merciless Spaniards.

It's our African lineage that is most enduring, still vibrant in our skin and hair. Ninety percent of the roughly ten million Dominicans, living at home and abroad, have African ancestry. This is the key link between the collective stories of African Americans and Dominicans. As a friend in college was fond of reminding me, "same trip, different ships."

It was while in college that a number of racially charged incidents led me to discover that I was black, not just Latina. But, my most valuable cross-cultural lessons at the time came from books. Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker and Malcolm X opened my eyes and heart. Gifted writers delightfully deliver the literary equivalent of the Vulcan mind meld, creating characters that serve as irresistible cultural guides.

I recently engaged in this discussion with three gifted Dominican American writers: Julia Alvarez, a renown veteran with eleven books to her credit; Junot Díaz, who burst onto the literary scene amidst great fanfare in 1996; and newcomer Loida Maritza Pérez. We spoke about their work--which often reflects the American preoccupation with race--and they shared their views on how our two groups differ, and why we're kin.

"Latino writers stand on the shoulders of the African American writers who paved the way, who with a new voice, a new face and a new rage enriched the canon of American literature," says Alvarez. She cites The Creation, a poem by James Weldon Johnson, with inspiring her early poetry. Lucille Clifton and June Jordan, were both influential teachers with whom she studied.

With In the Name of Salomé (Algonquin Books, 2000), Alvarez skillfully weaves, in alternating chapters, the fictionalized histories of 19th-century Dominican poet Salome Unreña, and her daughter Camila. It's a history lesson rich with romance and politics, in which Alvarez brilliantly uses the power of poetry to tightly bind mother, daughter and reader across time and space.

"She has shown him the only photo of Salomé, the sad eyes, the dark oval of the face, the full-lipped mouth…Even her outspoken friend Marion had avoided the subject of Camila’s race. As if to mention it were to bring up the unmentionable. "I don’t care what you are," Marion has often said to her. But she wants Marion to care about who she is. She wants to be apprehended fully, rather than only be seen through the narrow lens of a few adjectives the other person finds acceptable. And having been fully apprehended, she wants to be loved." – From Alvarez’ In the Name of Salomé

Drown (Riverhead, 1996), Junot Díaz' collection of short stories, was published to an avalanche of acclaim. His characters are drawn with brutal honesty in language loaded with strident profanity and silent prayer, evoking cruel immigrant realities and elusive dreams. "There's about fifty books whose very existence make me happy every day to be alive," says Díaz. "If I had to single out the one author who had the most profound influence on my artistic and political development, I'd have to pull out Toni Morrison. Morrison fundamentally altered my entire vision of writing. She writes specifically for an African Diasporic community. Anyone who can read and can get a hold of her books is welcome, but let's not kid ourselves folks; we people of African descent are her privileged audience ... the ones she is most centrally trying to dialogue with. Morrison is not attempting to translate black American culture for a white audience; she is no guide, no native informant. That in itself is revolutionary."

Díaz, who advises, "in the words of Ho Chi Mihn, every poet must learn to lead a charge," is an active bridge builder between the Haitian and Dominican communities. Díaz brings his own irreverent, urban voice to all of his work, as exhibited in this excerpt from How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie, from the best-selling short story collection, Drown.

"Look, she’ll say. My mom wants to meet you. She’s got herself all worried about nothing. Don’t panic. Say, Hey, no problem. Run a hand through your hair like the whiteboys do even if the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa. She will look good. The white ones are the ones you want the most, aren’t they, but usually the out-of-towners are black, black girls who grew up with ballet and Girl Scouts, who have three cars in their driveways. If she’s a halfie, don’t be surprised that here mother is white. Say, Hi. Her moms will say hi and you’ll see that you don’t scare her, not really…If the girl’s from around the way, take her to El Cibao for dinner. Order everything in your busted up Spanish. Let her correct you if she’s Latina and amaze her if she’s black. If she’s not from around the way, Wendy’s will do." – From Díaz’ Drown

Recently listed as one of the 20 most promising young writers by The New Yorker, Díaz will publish a short novel about "the most atypical Dominican kid you can imagine" in 2001. He's also finalizing a longer "urban science fiction/new age novel."

In Geographies of Home (Viking, February 1999), Loida Maritza Pérez paints a heart-rending portrait of a Dominican family struggling for survival in America. Paranormal phenomenon competes with insanity, domestic brutality and religious fanaticism to ultimately elicit compassion, and the insistent hope that elevates this from a depressing litany of woes into a song of praise for the resilience of love and family.

"Iliana would have traded her soul to have the long, straight hair and olive skin of her Spanish-speaking friends, or to wear her hair in cornrows and have no trace of a Spanish accent like the Johnson girls down the street. She used to hate the question "Where are you from?" "…What you talking about girl?" they’d ask." We don’t care where you come from! You be black just like us!" "Nah, you speak Spanish. You one of us," her Puerto Rican friends would say. She used to feel like a rope in a game of tug-of-war…with her skin color identifying her as a member of one group and her accent and immigrant status placing her in another, she had fit comfortably in neither…" – From Maritza Pérez’ Geographies of Home

Pérez is completing her second novel, which she calls "an intimately scaled narrative of a family living under the infamous Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic." The title, To Die Dreaming, is the English translation of "Morir Sonando", the sweet frothy Dominican drink made from two liquids that should never mix well: milk and either orange or lime juice. The liquids are laced with so much sugar that they blend, becoming smooth and deceptively sweet. "It's symbolic of the Trujillo dictatorship, where in order to survive, many had to turn a blind eye and sweeten the reality of day-to-day life with humor until they were living a lie."

Pérez reminds us that our bonds transcend literary icons. "Our island was the first place on the continent to which African slaves were shipped," she says. "We share the blood of common ancestors. Language separates us, but our silence regarding our shared history also divides. We must learn from and be sensitive to each other's complex histories, and the amount of pain that still exists in the national psyche of both cultures. We should refuse to be so easily fragmented--even by the unfortunate judgments some of us make about each other."

"African Americans are sometimes too quick to speak about Dominican race consciousness," says Díaz. "If we're honest, many African Americans still overvalue white characteristics and behavior. If there's one thing that ties African Americans and Dominicans together, it's our self-hatred, this tendency to value whiteness and to devalue blackness. It's a fundamental issue facing all African Diaspora communities. Another divider is conversations on race and culture in this country that are too often limited to black and white, and that erase Dominicans. I live in Harlem, and am often challenged by African Americans: 'Hey, why cant you folks just speak English?!' Some are upset when we're unwilling to define ourselves merely as Black."

"The discussions that have emerged on the African Diaspora are truly helpful," says Alvarez, "as they've opened up dialogue that supports the notion that one does not have to choose between identifying oneself as Latino or black." Díaz continues, "we're also immigrants in a country that is not very immigrant-friendly and we must deal with that from both whites and blacks. But we Dominicans also have much work to do, too. Some of us have embraced a white racist view of African Americans we must vehemently reject." There is hope, however, as we look at the writing we've produced--both separately and together--that we are crossing the divides both in our lives, and in our literature.