The article “Puertoricanness” written by Aurora Levins Morales tells a story of  the immigrant from Puerto Rico who is living in Chicago right now. In the beginning of article, the narrator created an image from the protagonist’s head which was a rooster wakes up people living on 59th street at 6:00 A.M., and everyone cursed at the rooster, and here the author used Metaphor and described the little town as a chopped corn and being ruined by the rooster. However, she still likes it because it was included as a part of emotion to her hometown, she just miss her hometown very much.

When she was first living in Chicago, she was always trying to hide her true identity and her accent. As an immigrant, she refused to speak Spanish in the nursery school. She missed her life back in her hometown, Puerto Rico. Here is extract what I do when I first came to United States as an immigrant couple years ago, I refused to speak Chinese in class because I don’t want to be treated different in class. I tried to hide my accent but unfortunately I have nothing on the English background and I was not able to hide it well.

Later in the story, the protagonist also could not keep her accent under lock and key, too. Every word she was trying to hide such as dyslexia, stuttering and halting slips out as the wrong language. After the narrator use three question in the continuous way to express how embarrassed the protagonist is feeling at that moment.

Finally she realized things about herself, the things she was trying to hide from others as a Puertoricanness for all these years had already shaped her in her habits, such as idiosyncrasies of her nature. She could just be herself and lived in this new home for herself. She found that there was no need to hide herself anymore. So now she yearned for the clocklessness, looking back into her childhood and her food she enjoyed in the poorest house.

Puertoricanness is a story about a  immigrant woman who is torn between two worlds of different cultures and habits of Puerto Rico and America. I find this story beautiful as we see our protagonist come to accept herself as she is and understands that her habits are different than non Puerto Rico. In this journey she gets overwhelmed with the new scenery things like food and setting were different. She felt so out of place that she even had memories coming back to her of Puerto Rico and the home she had their.

This story is good example of how most immigrants feel when the enter a new world (country with a different culture) and have to find a way to fit in. Most dive into and accept the new culture, others blend the two and others like our protagonist accepts the difference and keeps their culture in their hearts and continue to use practice out.  This text also relates to me since my mom, aunts, uncles and older sister are immigrants and they blended the two cultures of America and Barbados.

“Puertoricaness” stood out me because just looking at this title, you can tell it’ll be about somebody who is Puerto Rican. As I was reading this, even though I am not Puerto Rican, as a Asian American, I could relate sometimes to where she was missing the feeling of her hometown. She didn’t want to conceal her “real” self anymore. In the beginning it was explained that she enjoyed the morning wake up calls from a rooster back in Puerto Rico while everyone else hated it. She looked forward to the rooster’s wake up call at 6:00 A.M. When the sentence started out with “It was the Puerto Rico waking up inside her…” (page 1), I was confused at first. But it kind of related to the rooster’s  wake up call that no one enjoyed. The protagonist is a immigrant who moved to Chicago and misses her inner “Puertoricaness.” As a result, she got fed up with blending in with crowd and reverted back to her original accent which she calls “dyslexia, stuttering, halting, unable to speak the word which will surely come out in the wrong language” (page 1). When she was in nursery school, she refused to speak Spanish but now she enjoys Piña (Pineapple) juice without caring. She embraces her roots, her accent, her culture and enjoys being Puerto Rican. In page 2, she makes food in a pot and eats out of it when she’s hungry. It may be different for other people but for the protagonist, she embraces it. Her norm is different than some people and that’s okay because she did this in her childhood.

Although she may not be in Puerto Rico, she still has habits that were kept hidden when she went to Chicago. No matter where she is, she is home wherever as long as she remains her usual “Puertoricaness.” Even though she may not have the rooster waking her up in the morning, she no longer let the day shape her. In the end, she made it clear that she was every bit Puerto Rican and proud of it.

Everyone can relate to feeling prideful about their roots/culture and reading this story made me think about what makes me me. I am an American Born Chinese (ABC) and even though I don’t act the certain way that other Asians do, I respect their culture. I am what they call “Americanized.” Even though I do not practice the culture, when asked to by my mother, I would help out if need to. For example, they offer up food to their ancestors and pay their respects often. We also burn fake money to offer to our ancestors and some visits temples. You can’t help but respect your own culture and your own family tradition because we all grew up in it.  What makes her Puerto Rican is her accent, her love for Piña, and most importantly what she grew up around. She defined the word “Puertoricaness” and even though some of us may not practice what our parents practice, it shapes us and just maybe we may pass it on to the next generation.

Upon reading the short story, Puertoricaness by Aurora Levins Morales, it was a story that deeply hit me close to home.

We witness out protagonist now within the United States and how she is split between this home and the home she had once lived in but she to leave behind. After years of being away from home, she had no choice but to keep the other half of herself locked away. How the narrator mentions how something as simple of a roaster crowing at 6 in the morning, which would make anyone else in that town of Oakland groan in dismay, while it makes our protagonist awake something deep within her; a part of her that has been as sleep for much too long. Then bit by bit this other half slowly emerged to make herself known. She begins to let out bits of her accent, making her tone of speech distinctive to a Puerto Rican’s.  ‘Unable to speak the word which will surely come out in the wrong language.’ At this point she is no longer able to find her other half, bit and pieces of it try to make their way out as she began to become indulged in nostolgia as she misses her home.

This is an example of how the pressure of American life forced her to hide the best qualities of her, something our protagonist should be proud of; her culture, her heritage, these things that help shape this half of her.

We see how this young immigrant slowly alienate herself of what she truly was in order to live within this new American society. And while it shows she gained new North American qualities that had also played a crucial part on shaping her identity, but it had sadly over showed her original form. But we then see how she finally let’s out this other half, yet she finds balance with these two traits despite them being polar opposites, but it is these traits that create who she is, her Puerto Rican blood along with the experiences she gained in America. And she wears this Puertoricaness as a proud badge for all others to see.

My mother was once an immigrant from Colombia, and everyday she would mention of the wide endless pastures by the farm, the healthy animals she helped raised, and the simple yet pure life she lived where everyone new each other, neighbors behaved as brothers. The delicious food and beautiful language. But after she had arrived to America, she had no choice but to hide that all, all that build who my mother is. And while even now she laments her beautiful home, she uses her experiences in America that lead her to the life she has now, but reached a point where there was no need to keep away the Colombian farmgirl. Instead my mother gained the best if both worlds and believed there is no shame to be a Colombian in Nother America.

This story can be an experience in which countless immigrants have had, many like my mother, like the students within City Tech, like a large portion of people here in North America. But the protagonist had learned to never forget where your home is, the people you’ve met, and your heritage, to love your origin even when you move away to a new home. Those traits are both sides of the same coin.

In “Puertoricanness” by Aurora Levins Morales, the narrator speaks of a girl who feels as though she is reborn by breaking free from her constant suppression of her blood and heritage as a Puerto Rican woman. Throughout the text, she repeats 2 to 3 times that “it was Puerto Rico waking up inside her”, signifying a cease to the battle within her of being “more American and less Puerto Rican”.  The sound of the rooster teleports her to her very own island and serves as a sort of reminder of her roots and her mornings waking up in Puerto Rico as a child. This sense of breaking free of a self imprisonment slightly reminded me of Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour”, where similar to the woman of Levins’ story, Mrs. Mallard is liberated once she realizes she was free of her marriage to live a life of her own. Puerto Rico and all her ties to her island are suddenly awoken within her; ties that she knew have been within her since birth. She is undeniably a Puerto Rican woman and isn’t going to conform for the validation of someone else.

I found one part very relatable as a Caribbean girl, where Levins’ describes the habits of the “Puertoricanness” that lived within her. Habits like leaving a pot of food on the stove to reheat “whenever hunger struck”. These habits are what make her, and she had felt embarrassed of her true self for so long. By suppressing who she was beneath what she presented herself as, she kept her Puertoricanness caged and hidden, failing to be true to herself and yearning to be someone she wasn’t. Social standards can urge people to alter themselves just to blend in and conform, and by regaining this realization the girl is liberated and fully embracing the real her. I think Aurora Levins Morales gives a clear message about embracing your truest form, and being yourself undeniably and whole heartedly despite what may be “socially acceptable”.  To blend and conform is to lose who we really are, which is a waste of precious time and life.

In the short story Puertoricanness, Aurora Levins Morals the author and the protagonist struggles between her two lives as a Puerto Rican and as an American. I found this to be a beautiful story about a women that accepted who she was and where she came from. She was an immigrant who moved to America trying to fit into two different worlds and new lifestyles because of this she was feeling lost and overwhelmed, as though she was torn between two worlds and languages. She was missing the food,  atmosphere , and the memories that she had back home in Puerto Rico.  For the most part this type of behavior demonstrates the fear that migrants with non-American cultures have when settling into society within the states. As a result, she locked  herself up and the things that made her stand out, such as her culture, heritage, and language.  The clash of lifestyles made assimilation difficult and had her felling lost.  This fabrication of emotions and thoughts had resulted in a somewhat self hate of herself at an early age. In nursery school she refused to speak Spanish and purposely hid her accent. As she matriculated into secondary school, she couldn’t control herself anymore, her accent ‘seeped out, masquerading as dyslexia, stuttering, halting, and unable to speak the words that would surely come out’.

She needed time to realize what she needed to do, which was to let go and understand that it was fine to be herself. Not worrying about her accent or how she dressed, and needed to forget that she was an immigrant. She worried about  what would others thought of her, but over time she realized that it didn’t matter what other people thought of her.  Slowly she started to embrace her culture and stopped keeping up with a lifestyle where she was not comfortable living. Embracing her heritage and living a life without hiding parts of who she was and where she came from. The last line of the story, the author writes ‘making her presence felt…. and she was all Puerto Rican, every bit of her’. This shows she is not only letting herself go, but now being proud of who she is. She was proud to let out  the Puerto Rican woman that has been suppressed inside of her. She was suppressed her heritage because of the fear of the greater societies opinions, the fear of not fitting their lifestyle.

This is a story that some can relate to when coming to America.  Adapting in a new country may be hard, but it is important to still feel comfortable with themselves. Some may feel shy or embarrassed about showing their culture. They might try to avoid being different and  they may feel the need to hide their accent, or stop wearing clothes that represent where they came from. All this because  someone may look at them differently.  It is  important for them to realize that there is no reason to suppress themselves, and to understand that it is okay to stay true to themselves. Moving to a different country where people have different cultures does not always mean someone needs to change their own.

By Penina Gavrilova