Selected Published Essays
Dear Julia Alvarez…
I am a Spanish-speaking chica, born and raised in Panama, one among dozens of primos, tíos and tías, role models when mothers failed and fathers died—a world I left and haven’t left.
My own book is about to be born. It’s an expression of me—an excavation of memory and return to the soil of “la familia.”
I have stories to tell. I know you will understand.
Letters at the Narrow Waist of the World
I’ve written a memoir about her — my need to love her, and the distances I had to cross to be close to a woman troubled with overwhelming anxiety that left little room for me, or my sister and brothers. It is set in Panama and in the U.S. after I leave for school in my teens.
Living In-Between
We’ve taken off and curving left as we rise; the left motor is droning harshly. The highways below are close enough that I can make out the long vans and trucks and certain colors of the cars. We are over the Atlantic now. We’ve started our journey south to my busy city in that squiggle of land at the top of the South American hip.
Skin
Tía Mimí was lumpy. My tía Esther was fat. My father’s two sisters never married.
“You’ll grow up to be old maids like your aunts,” mami sang to Patricia and me.
“Julita doesn’t appreciate your wonderful papi,” they refrained. “Your mami’s spoiled,” they said. “She doesn’t deserve him.”
SOY/SOMOS: Slipping Into Spanish
“Está todo chévere,” he says when I call to ask about the cabinet that he’s building for me. I know immediately what he means. We use the word chévere in Panama. It means “everything’s cool.”
Soy/Somos: La Karlita: The Artist Who Could
I am sitting at a round table across from a pretty brunette, 24, with a ponytail set high on the crown of her head that flips from side to side when she’s expressive. There’s a blackboard in the room and windows to the parking lot sea below. (I’m in Silicon Valley after all.) The girl wears boxy eyeglasses not too different from mine, though mine hide wrinkles. Hers look like a prop, what a model might wear, like a hat.
“The writing is nuanced and fresh—doesn’t rely on some of the stale ways stories about language and culture are written. It breathes with authenticity and sensitivity—how refreshing.”
“I’m loving this series. It’s an interesting thing to be aware of not only cultural differences but also societal differences We often ignore (purposefully or not) the obvious.”
The Diner
It’s a sliver of a diner in a white American suburb: metal and cracked granite, red leatherette stools, three large fans in constant motion. The smell of grease from the grills brings them in, the comfort of that smell. The lack of perfection. Every store in this affluent town sells jewelry, clothes, or beautifully confectioned pastries.
Yellow Rose of Texas: 100 Birthday Candles in Panama
The D.J. at the end of the room has been instructed to open with “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and to play tía Adelaide’s old favorites. I look up. You can’t avoid looking up. The ceiling is as tall as a palm tree. We are in Casco Antiguo, the old, colonial quarter of Panama City where buildings date back as early as the 1600’s. My American husband and I took an Uber so as not to drive the narrow brick roads in the dark.
On My Watch: One Grandmother’s Story Of An Accident
The cast starts on her instep, covers her lower leg, ends four inches past her knee. It covers almost half of Penny, who is four. Our granddaughter will be fine when the bone heals, six weeks in an “Elsa Blue” fiberglass cast the color of princesses dresses. I am heartsick.