Vera’s moving novel — her 2nd just after Easily Bring you Roses — explores the fresh new pushes you to definitely provided one relatives to exit its precious homeland and you will search for an alternate begin in an unknown and you can unwelcoming homes
Marisel Vera shines a light toward a little-known aspect of U.S. history in the Liking Out of Glucose. At the turn of your 20th century, lots of people on the has just received territory out of Puerto Rico traveled midway worldwide to get results with the sugarcane ranches in The state.
To know as to the reasons Vicente Vega, their wife Valentina and you can Vicente’s 1 / 2 of-sis Raulito result in the rigorous go to Hawaii, Vera (who is off Puerto Rican customs) very first converts the brand new time clock back to the mid-nineteenth century, in the event that Foreign language nonetheless governed over the Caribbean isle. Slavery remains courtroom (it could perhaps not stop until 1873), and you can high poverty was systemic. Even after abolition, of numerous on area are not any a lot better than serfs, way of life “los angeles vida de perro.” (Foreign language try interwoven on the text message.) Having said that, Vicente’s grandfather try a mildly well-out of manager from a coffees plantation throughout the mountainous area for Utuado. But the family’s luck decline typically. By the time Vicente expands so you’re able to manhood, they are very humble growers, though he is better off versus peones which “is fortunate once they eat once a day.”
The brand new smitten girl “prepared to have love and you can adventure” gives up their close hopes for Paris to an effective de casa” for the farm is absolutely nothing particularly becoming a homemaker inside Ponce. Nonetheless, she vows so you’re able to “added by herself so you can their unique loved ones and put away all the childish ambitions,” because she produces within the a letter to their particular sis Elena immediately following her wedding. The existence, even if difficult, isn’t versus their delights. Some thing change if the You.S. ousts the new Spanish into the 1898. Whenever Hurricane Ciriaco hits the following year, the disaster are immense. The brand new ineffective American approach to handling the drama try depressingly similar to your bungled reaction to Hurricane Maria more an effective century after.
Who’s very in charge throughout the territory is obvious for the a quick scene that happens immediately following Raulito try sentenced to 3 many years of difficult work for a minor crime
Vicente, Valentina and Raulito generate an excellent wrenching choice to exit Puerto Rico behind and you can look for a much better lives someplace else. Nevertheless the Hawaiian Glucose Planters’ Association’s intends to this new puertorriquenos establish empty. Rather than ped shanties. Wages try paid in scrip rather than dollars. The new universities they were advised the children you will sit-in cannot are present. It’s a common but really https://kissbrides.com/belgian-women/charleroi/ devastating facts out-of exploitation, given that Puerto Ricans find they’ve traded that bleak state having another that’s in some way even worse, in which even the short conveniences regarding home were stripped aside.
Vera’s better-researched book are a valuable course from inside the Puerto Rican history and you may an eye-beginning glimpse in the unappealing fact trailing the You.S.’s commonly missed records because a beneficial colonial fuel. It facts interrogates brand new stunning connections between a couple outposts of the nation’s purple kingdom. Hawaii’s individual state-of-the-art reputation for colonization actually looked in identical outlined way as it is Puerto Rico’s, but we have a feeling of the latest disparate forces where you work on Polynesian archipelago. Pros instance Valentina and you may Vicente live-in shacks immediately after filled by Portuguese sugarcane pros and work close to Japanese immigrants, exactly who it check with uncertainty. The new sheriff pours the latest courtroom in the event a category away from pineapple liquid “delivered to him especially because of the their friend Dole, the owner of the greatest pineapple plantation in most off Their state.”
But Vera brings a more expected restorative to help you record. The ebook is also the story out-of an early woman’s loss out-of innocence, due to the fact Valentina slowly falls out their particular girlish naivete, and you can a succession out of tragedies and you can adversity develop their own to the a great more difficult, quicker emotional person. As there are a bona-fide and you may tragic feeling of losses certainly brand new immigrants after they get to The state. “We skip Puerto Rico and you can Ponce…and also the mountain into the Utuado,” Valentina writes from inside the a letter to help you her aunt, exactly who this lady has perhaps not viewed since she is ents that he will “never ever listen to coquis once more” in advance of telling themselves that “it had been absurd to cry more than frogs.”