Bird of Paradise Hardcover - 2013

Summary

Excerpt

PREFACE

Who in the world am I? Ah, thatâÈçs the great puzzle.

âÈ'LEWIS CARROLL, ALICE IN WONDERLAND

AS I WRITE THIS, MY THREE-MONTH-OLD SON IS STARING AT ME intensely from his bouncy seat. HeâÈçs cooing loudly, like heâÈçs trying to tell me something important, something heâÈçll forget by the time he utters his first word. Marceau has been here before. Of this, I am sure.

The left half of our brains, programmed to think that seeing is believing, would dismiss this kind of thinking as esoteric new age bullshit. However, thereâÈçs the other half that canâÈçt dismiss the idea that there just might be something to it. Many of us have recognized old souls in babies and children. WeâÈçve felt the presence of some force, be it a spiritual guide or God, intervening in our lives at some point. When I look over at my son in his bouncer, IâÈçm reminded of what a rabbi in Brooklyn, a seer in Fez, and a santero in Queens told me with slight variation when I was writing this book. We travel with the same clan over and over again, from one life into the next, until some ultimate purpose is fulfilled and we no longer need to return. When we illuminate the road back to our ancestors, they have a way of reaching out, of manifesting themselves . . . sometimes even physically.

Last year I embarked on an archaeological dig of sorts, using the science of ancestral DNA testing to excavate as many parts of my genetic history as I could in the span of twelve months. The DNA kits I collected were processed by Family Tree DNA, a Houston-based commercial genetic genealogy company. The companyâÈçs founder and CEO, Bennett Greenspan, provided further analysis. I tested myself, my father, a paternal great-uncle I hadnâÈçt met until the beginning of my project, and a maternal cousin I found on Facebook. I wanted to learn as much as I could about my ancestorsâÈç origins before we became Latino.

IâÈçve always been intrigued by the concept of race, especially in my own community and immediate family, where itâÈçs been a source of contention for as long as I can remember. The United States has the second highest Latino population in the world, second only to Mexico. And still, the mediaâÈ'they lump us all together into one generic clodâÈ'doesnâÈçt get us, either. Are Latino-Americans white? Black? Other? Illegal aliens from Mars? Or are we the very face of America?

Some see Latinos as the embodiment of this young countryâÈçs cultural melting pot. And though Mexicans have been residing here since before the arrival of the first Europeans, many of our fellow Americans view Latinos as public enemies. What our parents see isnâÈçt necessarily what we first- and second-generation American-born Latinos see when looking at ourselves in the mirror. According to the 2010 census, over half of all Latinos here identified as being solely white, and about a third checked âÈêSome Other Race.âÈë I was one of the three million, or 6 percent, who reported being of multiple races. I guess it all depends on whom you ask and when you ask. Race, IâÈçve learned, is in the eye of the beholder.

I donâÈçt look all the way white or all the way Black; I look like someone whoâÈçs a bit of both and then someâÈ'an Other. In Europe, people have mistaken me for Andalusian, Turkish, Brazilian, and North African. In North and West Africa, IâÈçve been asked if IâÈçm of Arabic or Amazigh descent. In New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, it varies: Israeli or Sephardic, Palestinian, Moroccan, biracial Black and white American, Brazilian, and so on. IâÈçve been mistaken for being everything except what I am: Dominican. My own racial ambiguity has been a topic of conversation since I was a teenager. Blending in has filled the pages in my book of life with misadventures and the kind of culturally enriching experiences that make me feel, truly, like a world citizen.

In more recent times, I found the idea that we live in a so-called post-racial society downright fascinating. I suspect someone at the White House or Disney created that catchphrase after the election of President Barack Obama, to fool us into thinking weâÈçre now living in a parallel universe where race is suddenly a nonfactor. The term âÈêpost-racialâÈë is an epic failure. More than four years after the fact, our first Black presidentâÈçs skin tone is still getting people punch-drunk with hate. It has fueled the dramatic rise in hate groups and the revival of the so-called Patriot movement. Sure, our sucky-ass economy factors in to the foaming-at-the-mouth vitriol against President Obama, but thereâÈçs something else contributing to the mainstreamâÈçs arrogant contempt for him. As intangible and trivial as our differences are, we cannot pretend that race doesnâÈçt matter anymore.

The exploration of and how we choose to identify ourselves is something else that compelled me to set upon this journey. Our identities are as fluid as our personal experiences are diverse. How I arrived at my own is one of 50.5 million possibilities. While Latino-Americans share enough cultural traditions to relate with one another and whatnot, we are also crazy different. One size doesnâÈçt fit all. ThatâÈçs why Part I of this book is a memoir. I grew up in a household where I was discouraged from celebrating, much less expressing, the Dominican half of my hyphenated identity. I was, quite frankly, sweated hard to mask it. In the first part of the book, I detail how I resisted the pressure to bend and how I constructed my own identity. My parentsâÈç Dominican roots, my fatherâÈçs apparent low self-esteem and hatred, âÈç80s hip-hop culture, and growing up in my beloved New York City are all significant.

* * *

The results of our ancestral DNA tests are outlined in Part II.

Both of my parents were born close to the site of the first European settlement in the Americas, Santo Domingo, on the island of Hispaniola. The Indigenous people we now refer to as TaÃÿnosâÈ'they stumbled upon and were subsequently duped by Columbus and his crewâÈ'originally inhabited the island. Our eastern part of the island is also the wellspring of blackness in the New World (and the site of the first slave rebellion on record). Modern-day Dominican Republic is also where English pirates, Europeans, crypto-Jews and Muslims, Arabs, Asians, our Haitian counterparts, and people from all over the world contributed to the cultural and racial tapestry of her people. With this in mind, I had absolutely no idea what I would find in my own DNA.

IâÈçll share one of the results here. What I didnâÈçt expect to find, other than in spirit, was a direct link to the Indigenous peoples of the island. IâÈçve been taught over the years that the Spanish, through disease and genocide via slavery, killed off virtually all TaÃÿno people throughout the Caribbean; they basically do not exist and are figments of our self-loathing imagination. When I saw an episode in Henry Louis Gates, Jr.âÈçs series Black in Latin America focusing on the Dominican Republic and Haiti, I heard it again.

The documentary opened with Gates mistakenly calling a Cuban guaguancÃć a Dominican merengue (the mistake was later corrected). While I tried not to see that musical snafu as an omen of things to come, I couldnâÈçt help but brace myself. I was certain that Gates, a man whoâÈçs become famous for connecting celebrities with their ancestral past, would shed some light on the complexities of identity and race in the Dominican Republic. I thought he would wax poetic on how racially diverse we are and how, thanks to ancestral DNA studies being done on the island, we are finding that significant numbers of people carry indigenous mitochondrial DNA. Indios have, alas, found ways to survive, like everything else on the islandâÈ'in fragments.

As Gates strolled down Calle Conde with an employee from the Ministry of Culture named Juan Rodriguez, he asked the man how heâÈçd be identified or racially categorized on the island. Rodriguez, a dark-caramel-complected man, replied, âÈêindio.âÈë Rodriguez went on to state that by the nineteenth century, there were no more Indigenous people left on the island like there were in South America, so Dominicans used the term to negate their blackness. Yeah, I know many dominicanos and other Latinos who deny their blackness, but the conversation could have been pushed further by exploring the reasons why, adding to the complex narrative about race and identity in our community. It would have been less archaic. A conversation with younger Dominicans and transnational Dominican-Americans about how and why these ideals are shifting would have been less archaic. That cipher never went down.

At the time of this writing, the Dominican government has passed a bill called the Dominican Republic Electoral Law Reform, eradicating the term indio on its citizensâÈç ID cards. The categories mulatto, black, and white will be the only ones people will have to choose from. I find it troubling that if I wish to officially recognize the Indigenous fragment of myself, it wonâÈçt be legal. Foisting an identity on people rather than allowing them the freedom and space to create their own is shady.

* * *

Henry Miller, in his book Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, wrote: âÈêOneâÈçs destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.âÈë This journeyâÈ'as the most unforgettable ones often doâÈ'led me to places I hadnâÈçt expected to go. The skeleton of this book is my exploration of the concept of race, identity, and ancestral DNA among Latinos, using my own story as one example. Race and identity have been a source of bitterness between my father and me since before I can remember. How I arrived at some sort of understanding and peace with Dad, something that never would have happened had I not invited him to take this trip with me, is the proverbial meat on the bones. I look over at Marceau, thankful that this illuminating ride has stopped here, in a place where logos and mythos exist in tandem, guiding me from one place to another with purpose.

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