This weekend I saw an incredible musical at the Denver Center for Performing Arts called “In the Heights”. It opened on Broadway in NYC two years ago to rave reviews and went on to win the Tony for Best Musical.
“In the Heights”, takes place in Washington Heights, the neighborhood at the very northern tip of Manhattan; it’s a ‘barrio’ of Hispanics, mostly from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. The parents came over years ago but now their children are stuck inconveniently between two worlds. First Generation isn’t an easy thing.
“The Heights” used to be where the Irish lived, and probably the Italians before that. These blocks, you see, are transient, they change as fast as the Hudson’s tide and the traffic that flows in and out of the George Washington Bridge. The people who inhabit these streets are longing for a better life. The parents who came here for their children work hard days and long nights to leave their children the American Dream. The children work hard at dreaming how to get out, how to move downtown and bring the traditions they love with them and perhaps forget the ones that remind them too much of where they came from.
I come from immigrants…I mean, well….this country was built on immigration, but much of family history starts here in the 1900s. My Grandmother on my mom’s side immigrated here after WWII but she didn’t come along-she was a war-bride. My Grandmother is Spanish and she worked in Nice, France at a USO hotel, where she met my grandfather, during the war.
She speaks 5 languages and still speaks English with a strong accent; I always laugh a bit when she sprinkles in traces and French, Italian, Spanish, and English into one sentence. She cooks with butter, has wine with lunch and eats a teaspoon of olive oil a day. She makes the best Strawberry Rhubarb Pie on earth and she always has cans of pop ready for when the grandkids come to visit. She is an incessant very opinionated Democrat who still reads the paper every day and watches the 4pm news on Channel 4. She used to be the shoe salesman at May D&F. She is strong and a hard worker and funny and lively and 8 years short of a century.
My mother is the 3rd of 6 children First Generation. She speaks Spanish, but only after visiting Colombia 10 years ago, where her brain suddenly remembered the language of youth. She grew up in era very different from now. It was not so much multi cultural, as is the norm today, but rather incredibly focused on integration. Her culture wasn’t celebrated, rather it was relegated to the history books of Ellis Island.
I am the youngest of 5. Second Generation. I took Spanish twice and failed it twice. Oddly enough I took Swahili and got an A. I grew up neither fully embracing the culture of my blood, but not rejecting it either. I guess I knew what I was but didn’t really make a fuss about it.
But sometimes I hear Spanish beats and rhythms and my heart dances; I hear the tender plucks of the Flamenco guitar and I remember a bit more of who God created me to be.
