Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere

A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 Chicago Review of BooksThat I was born Puerto Rican was happenstance, but that I have no connection to what it means is no accident. My grandparents made conscious decisions and so did my father as part of the first generation born here in the States. And none of it bothered me until recently, which is probably why I cant quite put my finger on any of this. Im still grappling with what Ive lost and how I can miss something Ive never had.Robert Lopezs grandfather Sixto was born in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, in 1904, immigrating to the United States in the 1920s, where he lived in a racially proportioned apartment complex in East New York, Brooklyn, until his death in 1987. The familys efforts to assimilate within their new homeland led to the near complete erasure of their heritage, culture, and language within two generations.Little is known of Sixtohe may have been a longshoreman, a painter, or a boxer, but was most likely a longshoremanor why he originally decided to leave Puerto Rico, other than that he was a meticulously slow eater who played the standup keyboard and guitar, and enjoyed watching baseball. Through family recollection, the constant banter volleyed across nets within Brooklyns diverse tennis community, as well as an imagined fabulist history drawn from Sixtos remembered traits, inDispatches From Puerto Nowhere: An American Story of Assimilation and Erasure, Robert Lopez paints a compassionate portrait of family that attempts to bridge the past to the present, and re-claim a heritage threatened by assimilation and erasure.