“Educate a boy, and you educate an individual. Educate a girl, and you educate a community.” ~ Adelaide Hoodless

I had the honor of helping with a second “Crafts for a Cause” set up by Buena Market, which also helped me come back to finally finish the essay I started writing about my first experience lending a hand over the summer. In truth, I’ve spent a significant amount of time reflecting on the importance of community…

Indeed, I believe we all have—times being what they are. So this is the second installment of what I hope will be a series of essays—each one examining how different communities I’ve been a part of have shaped & continue to shape me… I’m already looking forward writing the next (about our most recent experience)!

But before I get ahead of myself, I need to revisit last summer—which is when I first met the small business entrepreneurs & family behind Raíces Plant Truck & Taco Riendo Truck (who I’ll be focusing on in the third installment). For now, I hope you enjoy this flashback to the fateful day in June when our paths crossed.

Some fabulous, fellow 1st & 2nd generation Americans who I feel truly fortunate to call my friends in our adopted hometown in Central Florida.

I remember the exact moment—as though it were a movie in my mind—that I first felt proud to be a bilingual speaker. I was eighteen—a freshman at Florida State University paying a visit to the bookstore on campus… Having declared myself an English Major—with a concentration in Creative Writing instead of Literature—I was quite eager to show off my skills get to work. I’d already met some self-proclaimed poets around campus & begun attending their club, but hadn’t decided if that was my genre. My notebooks were full of play-writing, & I’d only just bought what was to become the first of many poetry journals… 📓

In fact, I knew painfully little about poetry—as most college freshmen quickly discover. English Professors don’t typically assign textbooks, so I had student loan money reserved for that purpose burning in my pocket… I high-tailed it to the bookstore to peruse that particular section, & there I picked up a copy of The Captain’s Verses by Pablo Neruda—a poet I’d heard my father mention before. It was a bilingual edition, but having been educated here in the United States (& therefore, in English) meant I wasn’t entirely comfortable reading in Spanish—unless it was a comic book, or a bedtime story designed for children.

As I thumbed through the book, I remember feeling relatively unimpressed by the verses—but I was skipping over the originals & only reading the translated versions. Eventually, my eyes tricked my brain as they rapidly skimmed from left to right: Only tasting the lines in Spanish, at first… Then I began to savor them, & then I began to devour them—skipping the translations entirely. “My goodness,” I thought… “The originals in Spanish are SO much better!” It’s likely I shouted at the shelves—my heart beating faster in my chest. So I bought the book (along with a stack of others), & have revisited it many times since then.

But it was a rather bittersweet moment—for it was standing there stumbling through the lovesick captain’s versus that I first felt proud about the fact that I was a native Spanish speaker. The pride was suddenly eclipsed by shame as I started to unpack all the reasons I hadn’t felt that pride before… As I started to unpack just how ashamed I’d been of my family (especially my parents), my heritage, & my rich cultural inheritance (up until that point). As the year went on, I realized I wasn’t growing homesick… I was culture-sick. After giving up on a Philosophy minor—I declared myself a Spanish Literature minor instead.

I wish I could say that my shame ended there, but it had only just begun... I’d go on to develop a stutter—which is purportedly more prevalent in bilingual children—when I volunteered to read aloud in my Spanish Literature classes. I’d go on to publish my own debut book of poetry—only to crumble the day I gifted a copy of it to my grandmother, & realized she wouldn’t be able to read it (since it was in English). I’d go on to move to France & become trilingual, only to discover that I had a thick Hispanophone accent when I spoke French. I’d finally move back to Florida—where I felt most at home—because of family.

But my chosen family, & my definition of what it means to be family, has been a fluctuating thing… I felt desperately alone as (I honestly appeared to be) the only Puerto Rican living in Paris. I found myself feeling desperately alone yet again early last summer, as (again I appeared to be) the only person shouting into the abyss about the escalating conflict(s) overseas. The horrific plight of the Palestinian people was triggering affecting me in profoundly unexpected ways, & I couldn’t help but wonder if it was my experiences as a Puerto Rican raised in the United States which flared my desperation & fueled my despair…

Yet it didn’t escape my attention that there were other first-generation folks—many with Latinx or Indigenous backgrounds—who also seemed to be openly struggling. This is when I reached out to friends who had just opened their bakery Bandidas to ask if there were any fundraisers on the horizon, & they redirected me to our mutual friend Steph—the absolute visionary behind the Buena Market brand & experience. After some pestering, she confessed that she was planning on testing out a new initiative called “Crafts for a Cause” & that the idea was motivated by her own desire to do something for Palestine.

I felt electric when she asked if I’d like to participate—as though the strings of fate were becoming knotted instead of flapping like loose ends in the wind… It was a crossroads at which nearly all of my passions intersected—language, justice, heritage, food, family, education, community, children, & the arts. I said yes, & tried not to freak these friends out with my enthusiasm. The truth was, I needed to surround myself with like-minded individuals as much as I felt the need to protest the war. I knew—I believe we all knew—there wasn’t much we could do to help the people of Palestine besides show our solidarity.

I’ve participated in a fair amount of protests throughout my life… Ever since I stumbled upon my first animal rights march while walking around Old San Juan with my cousin in Puerto Rico: We were both handed signs, & simply went along chanting until we reached the Capitol Building before breaking off again to continue our excursion of the city. I’ve linked arms & joined in song with fellow anarchists during Occupy Wall Street, helped surround the White House to protest the expansion of pipelines, & disappeared into a crowd of thousands who took to the streets in Paris during the 2015 Climate Summit.

I’ve also lost some of that fire in my belly—growing more bitter & cynical with the passing years, & watching as the world only seems to worsen in countless ways… I’ve discovered that I’m disabled, & only grown angrier at the appalling disenfranchisement of entire sectors of the population. I’ve learned that hope is an all too easy thing to extinguish—that it is far more challenging to fan the flames necessary to keep it alive. But I do still believe in the power of coming together—if only to break bread, to converse, & to help educate children. It seems to me that these simple tools are also the most powerful in changing…

Changing hearts. Changing minds. Changing the self. Changing the world, too.

None of these things can be done alone. In fact, the older (I won’t say wiser, though one can hope) I become the more I realize that nothing can be done alone… Yet there is ample medium between doing things in isolation & doing things en masse (French adopted by English meaning “in a mass”). It’s easy to feel like part of a movement—part of something massive—but difficult to feel like part of a community while participating in marches or protests. I do still believe in the importance of such demonstrations—there is a time & place for them—but I have also come to realize that it’s easy to be a face in the crowd…

Being part of a community—meaning being in actual communion with others—takes far more effort. Showing up is the only thing required to contribute to a protest, & to be one more body in an ocean of bodies chanting or shouting in unison offers a kind of high which can only be achieved surrounded by that many other humans acting as a single force… Like an army going into battle, or a stadium full of fanatics cheering for their team. It is quite another thing entirely to be on the team that is working together—each with their own part to play—towards a common goal. As the crowd dissipates—so does the high…

Eight months have passed since this unforgettable day in June—yet I still feel its glow. It lit a light inside of me which won’t soon be extinguished. It served to remind me of the goodness still thriving in the world, & of how I don’t even have to go looking all that far to find it. I can’t say for certain whether any life was altered or minds were changed or hearts were touched… I can’t even be sure that our fundraising effort made any impact whatsoever. I highly doubt that any amount of money can help alleviate the grief of an entire population suffering an ethnic cleansing or a genocide—when it is the root of these evils.

All I can say is that I was changed. All I can be sure of is that I felt connected to something greater than myself—something my ancestors would be proud of. Somehow, it felt more powerful than writing a poem. Even if all I did was show up—smile at strangers, teach a handful of children how to make art, & temporarily forget my sorrow in the company of friends. It was a balm for my soul, & provided a container into which I could pour my grief… Which in turn, helped me carry it better. Helped me carry myself into the future—not a dark & dismal future, but one where hope still blossoms despite the odds against it.

{ Shout-out to who I couldn’t have done this day without, & who quite frankly deserves an entire essay of gratitude for his efforts as my co-educator…

To be continued in Pt. 3! }