Tales from the Barrio and Beyond
Irma Olmedo
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In this collection of short stories, Irma Olmedo immerses her readers in the world of her childhood growing up in New York’s El Barrio during the 1950s, 60s and beyond. Tinged with nostalgia for her years surrounded by family, celebratory meals, and togetherness while facing economic challenges as other working-class Puerto Rican families in la gran urbe, Olmedo’s stories reclaim the humanity of displaced Puerto Rican families in New York through dialogues that are succinct yet truly authentic, bursting with a candidly felt, nurturing cariño. While the focus resides on her nuclear family and neighboring communities, the stories reveal a larger social and historical moment in New York when Puerto Ricans migrated and populated the factories and urban workplaces and settled with their families and friends. Themes such as the mistranslations of migration through consumerism, the power of music and memory, the social alliances between Puerto Ricans and Italians, the limited access to resources, gender and sexual identities, and the diverse generational perspectives of identity and culture across time, all come together in these succinct narratives. Olmedo’s unique talent in assuming the voices of her various family members throughout these stories, including her own as an adult, is evident throughout the collection. Tales from the Barrio and Beyond is a most timely read as our communities are currently dehumanized under state violence, cruel immigration policies, and ethnic cleansing practices. When brown immigrants and their families have become the targeted “criminals” of the current federal regime, Olmedo’s short stories offer us a glimpse, without a paralyzing nostalgia, of the quotidian humanity of our families who migrated to New York escaping poverty, hunger, and unemployment. Even within the legality of their U.S. citizenship, Puerto Ricans from the island arrived in this other island, Manhattan, with no knowledge of English, no references to modern urban life, but with determination, solidarity, and hope for themselves and their loved ones. The local characters that populate these stories –Silvano, a war veteran and submissive son to his mother, yet a mysterious figure to the children in the block; Tía Mariana who finally got dentures later to lose them accidentally, having to start all over again saving for her new teeth; Roberto, the nephew who disappeared for three months and whom the espiritista believed to have died; the chicken that became asopao during the holiday meals; the mother and father—each animate these narratives as part of a social collectivity. |
The narrative voice achieves a sense of belonging thru her familia, where these Boricua migrants find strength and hope in a better future for them. One story at a time, Olmedo constructs an edifice of human beings tied by a sense of diaspora, the large extended family that the narrator finally meets after her uncle’s premature death and that serves as an icon of solidarity and affiliations. It is this affiliation, the connection to, and responsibility for others, relatives, neighbors, that facilitate their integration to U.S. society and the achievement of a middle-class comfortable life. The two final stories incorporate Olmedo as an adult during her years as a college professor in Education and as a widow in Chicago, a reminder of the achievements and contributions that those “foreign Others” have made to this country and to the American Dream as a possibility fulfilled for past generations, but not for current immigrants.
Irma Olmedo is a new voice that celebrates and humanizes Puerto Ricans in the diaspora at a time when the State brutally dismisses our lives as unworthy of recognition and inclusion. Her stories offer us a glimpse of hope urgently needed in our times.
Irma Olmedo is a new voice that celebrates and humanizes Puerto Ricans in the diaspora at a time when the State brutally dismisses our lives as unworthy of recognition and inclusion. Her stories offer us a glimpse of hope urgently needed in our times.
Irma Maria Olmedo is an Emerita Professor at University of Illinois, Chicago, where she taught and researched bilingualism, teacher education, and immigration. She has lectured in many countries, including Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Australia, Brazil, and Russia. She now writes fiction, including a memoir.
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