BOOK REVIEW
'Spanglish' looks at what it is to be
Latino
By Diego Ribadeneira, Globe Staff,
3/11/2002
In a nation where so many claim different roots, trying to come
up with acceptable ways to define racial and ethnic groups is a difficult
and, very often, contentious endeavor. This is indisputably the case with
Latinos, whose explosive growth is rapidly shifting the political,
economic, and cultural landscape in many parts of the United States.
But who is a Latino? The latest census, in 2000, found that people of
Hispanic heritage identify themselves as biracial, even triracial.
So Hollywood stereotypes notwithstanding, the Latino world is far from
homogeneous. Cubans in Miami, Puerto Ricans in New York, and Mexicans in
Los Angeles share a common language, yet they have unique experiences.
''There are several borderlines between us,'' Ed Morales writes in the
introduction to his book ''Living in Spanglish: The Search for Latino
Identity in America.'' ''One between first-generation immigrants and
American citizens of varying levels of assimilation, and more between
Caribbean Latinos, who are more influenced by African culture,
Mexican/Central American Latinos, who are more influenced by indigenous
Meso-American cultures, and South Americans, whose societies tend to be
more Euro-colonial in tenor.''
Nevertheless, with the rise of superstars such as Jennifer Lopez, Marc
Anthony, and Ricky Martin, Latino culture has become part of the pop
mainstream. But what exactly is Latino culture?
Morales, a poet, fiction writer, and journalist, makes an ambitious and
impressive attempt to provide a credible answer. Setting aside
''Hispanic'' and ''Latino'' as problematic, Morales prefers to use the
term ''Spanglish.'' But he broadens the term beyond language to encompass
a multicultural, multiracial identity.
''Spanglish is what we speak, but it is also who we Latinos are, and
how we act, and how we perceive the world,'' Morales writes. ''It's also a
way to avoid the sectarian nature of other labels that describe our
condition, terms like Nuyorican, Chicano, Cuban American,
Dominicanyork.''
Latino culture, Morales says, foreshadows what the United States is
becoming: a hybrid society in which it will become increasingly difficult
to put people in simple categories.
''Living in Spanglish'' is ''an informal invitation to those who seek
to end the tyranny of black and white,'' Morales writes. ''It's always
been easy to see race in these terms, the terms of the opposite poles of
the spectrum. But ... we are in a new age in America today. It is an age
in which the nuances of brown, yellow, and red are as important, if not
more so, than black and white.''
Morales takes us on a tour that ranges from music to movies to
literature, highlighting how Latinos have striven to integrate their
native roots with their experience in the United States.
He provides an insightful look at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the East
Village performance venue that has been a hotbed of Spanglish culture, a
place to celebrate a transnational identity. According to Morales, the
cafe spawned a movement that ''began to embrace the idea of using the
experience of Latinos... as a metaphor for multiculturalism.''
In music, salsa, which has become a staple of nightclubs, is a
quintessential example of the Spanglish phenomenon. The great musician
Willie Colon, a Nuyorican who first emerged in the South Bronx in the late
1960s, helped create the sound of salsa by taking advantage of New York's
rich Latino stew. He, as Morales notes, ''melted together the sounds,
fusing merengue (from the Dominican Republic) with bomba (from Puerto
Rico), and throwing it in a guaguanco (from Cuba).''
The book does suffer from sloppy editing. In some cases, Morales
repeats a point or a fact. And in his effort to take a wide-lens view of
''Latino,'' Morales sometimes strays too far afield from the central
theme. In a relatively brief book, he covers an extraordinary amount of
ground, and it feels, at times, as if Morales is trying to shovel as much
into his narrative as possible.
Still, this is a fascinating read, and Morales is a bright thinker.
This is a timely book as the United States confronts a fragmented racial
and ethnic future and the influence of Latinos grows.
''Latinos give the chance for America to move beyond identity
politics,'' Morales says. ''The Latino cultural `style' has the potential
to free everyone from the guilt of having to reconcile with a strict
definition of identity. Being Latino is being everyone, embracing the
entire spectrum of human behaviors and tendencies without
fear."
This story ran on page B11 of the Boston Globe on
3/11/2002.
© Copyright
2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
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