Aurora Levins Morales

Daughter of a Puerto Rican mother and a Jewish father, Aurora Levins Morales (b. 1954) lived in Puerto Rico until she was thirteen, when her family moved to Chicago. She received her undergraduate degree from Franconia University in New Hampshire and her MA and PhD from the Union Institute in Ohio. She co-authored with her mother Getting Home Alive (1986), a collection of short stories, essays, and poetry. In 1999, she published Medicine Stories: History, Culture, and the Politics of Integrity, followed by Remedios: Stories of Earth and Iron from the History of Puertorriqueñas in 2001. An activist and writer, Morales currently divides her time between the San Francisco Bay Area and Minneapolis. In the poem that follows, she celebrates her mixed heritage.

I am a child of the Americas,

a light-skinned mestiza of the Caribbean,

a child of many diaspora, born into this continent at a crossroads.

I am a U.S. Puerto Rican Jew,

a product of the ghettos of New York I have never known.  5

An immigrant and the daughter and granddaughter of immigrants.

I speak English with passion: it’s the tongue of my consciousness,

a flashing knife blade of crystal, my tool, my craft.

I am Caribeña, island grown. Spanish is in my flesh,

ripples from my tongue, lodges in my hips:  10

the language of garlic and mangoes,

the singing in my poetry, the flying gestures of my hands.

I am of Latinoamerica, rooted in the history of my continent:

I speak from that body.

I am not africa. Africa is in me, but I cannot return.  15

I am not taína. Taíno is in me, but there is no way back.

I am not european. Europe lives in me, but I have no home there.

I am new. History made me. My first language was spanglish.

I was born at the crossroads

and I am whole.  20