I spent my first semester of my junior year sifting through the family archive and sorting through what I loved to call the history of our lives. I’ve incorporated archival photographs that have inspired my train of thought and the work you’ll be seeing today. I started this series to find a new sense of identity by searching for people like me.. To find a sense of belonging in the places from which people came before me.
The Bronx is often stigmatized as; poor, dirty, and dangerous. On the surface these all are true but we often forget that the Bronx is home to some of the most hard working people. It's home to the people where the system has failed them time and time again yet have continued to prevail!
My Dad who spent his adolescence in the Bronx has described the streets he once called home as “the walking dead,” the place where he and our family worked their way up the social ladder and out of poverty. Moving here from Puerto Rico, although a privilege was also not easy. They would jump from sleeping at grocery stores, school, friends house, and shelters till they were able to find their home here in the Bronx.
My project is still ongoing as I move into my senior year. I’m dedicated to listening to my family members' stories and keeping them alive. In the photographs you will meet the faces of; my parents, my cousins, and my great grandfather.
Since I was younger I was always told that I wasn’t Puerto Rican enough. To my eyes, to my toes, to the skin that covers my bones; I was seemingly not enough. I did not look like my cousins and my cousin did not look like me. This never stopped my self-discovery journey but was the match to the flame of why I began my project. So I ask you, what does it mean to be truly Puerto Rican?
My work has helped me become closer to my roots, and helped me begin to find peace within my identity as a
Puerto Rican American.
Through the way we live, the way we speak, and the way we love. The photographs not only prove that we exist, but also elevates my idea that we are all cut from the same cloth.
Soy Boricua.