Robert Lopez writes in his memoir about the Puerto Rican side of his family he never knew.
“What I don’t know about my family,” Robert Lopez writes in his memoir “Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere,” “is almost everything.”
Lopez spoke recently by phone about assimilation and about what the void in his family history has meant to him. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. I was aware that the Puerto Rican side of my family was non-existent, a direct contrast to the Italian side, which was big. I saw them regularly and engaged in all the cultural stuff in terms of food and holidays but even there they never gave us any family history either.
I do think it is a generational thing. There aren’t as many younger people now who have this disconnect. I’ve heard from a lot of people closer to my age from all over the world – races, ethnicities and religions – about their own sense of disconnection. It makes me feel connected to them and also sad that we all lost out on something important.
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