Pelo Bueno and Mejorar la Raza: (Re)Building our Puerto Rican Literary Canon
By Celia M. Ayala Lugo
In the introduction of So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy (2004), Jamaican-Canadian sci-fi author Nalo Hopkinson recounts a time when she met a scholar while living in Toronto who asked her about her short story “Riding the Red,” a “jazz riff” of “Little Red Riding Hood” (7). In their conversation, the scholar posits that the tools mentioned in the famous Audre Lorde saying, “massa’s tools will never dismantle massa’s house,” also apply to BIPOC and Caribbean folks. In other words, the literature produced in these communities can be susceptible to internalizing colonial ideals precisely because they use “colonial” tools and crafts. In contrast, Hopkinson postulates that these tools can become our own. [1] To do so, one must first recognize the difference in context and purpose between these literature. Hence, she writes:
When I write science fiction and fantasy from a context of blackness and Caribbeanness, using Afro-Caribbean lore, history, and language, it should logically be no different than writing it from a Western European context: take out the Cinderella folktale, replace it with the crab-back woman folk tale, exchange the struggle of the marginalized poor with the struggle of the racialized marginalized poor. And yet, it’s very different (8).
It is tremendously obvious that the stories and experiences depicted in classical Western European canonical tales diverge significantly from Caribbean narratives. Western sci-fi and fantasy literature typically depict colonialism and imperialism in the role of saviors and benefactors while “subtly” endorsing the dehumanizing treatment of Indigenous, Black, and other non-western cultures and civilizations. In contrast, Hopkinson encourages postcolonial writers to engage and rewrite in these genres with our own cultural and geopolitical realities.
This contrast can be seen in the field of children’s and young adult literature, particularly when comparing Western literature of empire with Caribbean literature. Works such as J.M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy (1911), as well as Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess (1905) and The Secret Garden (1911), depict British children as educated, civilized young child saviors, and Indigenous and South Asian children as inherently inferior, typically as servants in the white child’s household. Under the colonial project, instructional systems in the Caribbean taught – and continue to include in some school curricula – Western literature of empire as the canon. Although there are more schools incorporating Caribbean children’s and young adult literature in their curricula, more work is still needed.
As a little girl, I remember reading thin, but illustrious Disney adaptations of storybooks like 101 Dalmatians, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and Cinderella, as well as watching their respective films. The same could not be said of my childhood experiences with the Caribbean canon. The lack of self-representation in literature, film, and media is to such an extent that, here I am, delving into hundreds of hours of dedicated research to restore – to myself and the Caribbean audiences – humanization and validation of our experiences. This includes our geopolitical histories, cultures, as well as the linguistic and racial diversity present in contemporary postcolonial Caribbean works, particularly in children’s and young adult literature. But I am not condemning my childhood, nor am I saying that exposure to Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen, or Disney-adaptation fairy tales has negatively impacted me. If it were not for these books and films, my starvation for creativity and imagination would not have ignited my brain to begin pursuing studies in children’s and young adult literature in undergrad.
That said, I look at modern and contemporary Caribbean children’s and young adult books that display afroreparaciones – Pelo Bueno and Mejorar la raza by Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, to name a few – and mainstream film such as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and see just how important they are for interpreting Caribbean and diasporic life. I wish I had grown up watching a piece of myself on television or reading myself in a book. Feeling mentally displaced in an English or Spanish classroom, where Eurocentric stories were the heart of the course, often meant being deprived of Puerto Rican, Latin American, or Caribbean characters, of diverse colors and shades, with scenic, picturesque illustrations of a palo de mangó or de guayaba, or rainy, humid days in the patio.
Growing up, it felt as if I was a spectator and not a participant in my land. Yet, after gazing for the first time at books like Esmeralda Santiago’s When I Was Puerto Rican or The House on the Lagoon by Rosario Ferré, where Puerto Rican and diasporic voices are centered in their stories, I came to realize my Puerto Rican voice is sufficient by itself; our stories are as powerful and respectable as works that have been taught by the Western canon for centuries.
[Brittany Gordón Pabón, Pelo Bueno Book Cover, 2018]
What is common in today’s Caribbean children’s and young adult literature is that, unlike their nineteenth century and early-twentieth century Western imperialistic counterparts, is how emerging Caribbean writers from all linguistic backgrounds – Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanophone, and Dutch – aim to restore and reclaim Black, indigenous, Indian, Chinese, and other non-white Caribbean and diasporic narratives and agency. For instance, the queer Afroboricua writer Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro has become a pivotal voice in the Hispanophone Caribbean using her stories to openly discloses the realities of racial, heteronormative, and socio-economic relations and dynamics in Puerto Rico.
Through her art of storytelling, her books Pelo Bueno and Mejorar la raza have become so sensational, many Spanish, English, History, and Social Studies teachers and librarians have been teaching them to their elementary, intermediate, and high-school students in both public and private schools in Puerto Rico. Discussing the realities of navigating Puerto Rican schools and society as a Black Puerto Rican girl, both picture books entail the stories of Petronila, a grandmother who is a pivotal figure for her granddaughter, Vanessa.
In Pelo Bueno, an authentic conversation between the two allows Vanessa to detail her experiences of racism in school. While styling Vanessa’s hair, Petronila reminds her granddaughter about the importance of embracing and accepting her afro hair as a cultural inheritance, passed down from generation to generation. Through this space, Vanessa is reaffirmed that her afro hair is beautiful, versatile, and culturally significant to herself and her lineage. Petronila reassures her that she does not have to conform to Western beauty standards to be considered beautiful, because she already is, just as she is.
In this way, Pelo Bueno destigmatizes how racism is engendered in Puerto Rico and Latin America, not just in actions and colonialist nation-state propaganda, but through language. Pelo Bueno retaliates against the racist language and signaling of afro-textured hair as “bad hair” or pelo malo, a term commonly used in Puerto Rico and Latin America. [2] The text thus restores agency towards Black Puerto Ricans and Latin Americans who reclaim their own identity, complexion, and hair as beautiful and acceptable in our contemporary society. Through confronting the overt racism and anti-blackness in Puerto Rico, Pelo Bueno and Mejorar la raza serve as agents of recuperation of what was taken through Western colonialism: positive Afroboricua representation for children and young adult audiences in the archipelago and diaspora.
[Brittany Gordón Pabón, Mejorar la Raza Book Cover, 2019]
Just as Pelo Bueno specifically delves into decolonizing Black hair beauty standards in Afroboricua children and youth, Mejorar la raza not only profoundly examines racial disparities in school but also addresses the reality of colorism in Puerto Rico. This is seen primarily through an act of rejection wherein the darker-skinned Mariela is not included within Vanessa’s friend circle. Through this interaction, Arroyo Pizarro unveils the evident discrimination and exclusion of darker-skinned people in society. Importantly, Mejorar la raza refers to the frequently-used phrase many people in Puerto Rico – most commonly elders and older generations – use to celebrate Black or other non-white Puerto Ricans who bring white or lighter-skinned partners to “better the race” in their families and “wash the darkness away.”
Through Mejorar la raza, Petronila intends to create an analogy of colorism with her mofongo ingredients – plantains, spices, root vegetables, herbs, and oil – that work better when together in unison. In other words, Petronila teaches Vanessa that respect and tolerance are essential components to foster positive relationships with their friends – everyone can learn to love and accept one another, regardless of skin color. As a group of Caribbean children, the mofongo analogy also depicts how creolization resurges from the process of acculturation among children from distinct racial identities and backgrounds in the same social environment. Just as Pelo Bueno teaches children afroreparaciones, self-healing, and self-love for one’s hair and culture, Mejorar la raza fosters unity, love, respect, and tolerance to deconstruct colorism in Puerto Rican children and youth.
What fascinates me about Arroyo Pizarro’s picture books is that they actively decolonize racist, patriarchal, and colorist mentality and language that is normalized in our Puerto Rican society. As the authors suggests in “Black History, Enslavement, and Education in Puerto Rico: The Teaching of Afrodescendencia in Public Schools,” there exists an ”urgent need for a revision of the DE [Department of Education] standards and curricular maps, with the purpose of totally revamping existing themes related to Black history in such a way as to eliminate maneuvers of silence, trivialization, and simplification” (156). Introducing children’s and young adult books, such as Pelo Bueno and Mejorar la raza, to Puerto Rican schools can revert the evident cultural alienation and unrelatability that exist when solely teaching classical canonic Western works of children’s and young adult literature in post(neo)colonial Caribbean settings in Puerto Rico, diaspora, and the rest of the region. Exposure, access, and abundance are thus critical for our children and youth. With Caribbean representation we can begin (re)writing and (re)claiming our history, our voices, and our humanity.
Notes
[1] Importantly, Hopkinson argues in her introduction to So Long Been Dreaming that Black, Caribbean, and other postcolonial writers ought to “take the meme of colonizing the natives and, from the experience of the colonizee, critique it, pervert it, fuck with it” (9). With this outlook, Hopkinson advocates Black, Indigenous, Caribbean, and other non-western postcolonial writers to retake genres like fantasy and science fiction and (re)shape and (re)write them through liberating lenses. In other words, postcolonial writers ought to become what Joshua Yu Burnett refers to in “The Great Change and the Great Book” as “critics to the degree to which they map out in their fictions new speculative frameworks that liberate rather than oppress colonized peoples” (135). Instead of perpetuating “otherizing” narratives that feed into colonialism and white supremacy, science fiction and fantasy can contextualize or delineate socio-cultural realities in postcolonialism, such as issues of race, gender, class, migration, transnationalism, language, and cultures that reflect experiences in the Caribbean and diaspora. See Joshua Yu Burnett. “The Great Change and the Great Book: Nnedi Okorafor's Postcolonial, Post-Apocalyptic Africa and the Promise of Black Speculative Fiction.” Research in African Literatures 46:4 (2015): 133-150.
[2] Pelo malo is a pejorative term that refers to afro-textured hair. This term is still being utilized by different Puerto Rican generations, to the extent that school halls may echo this word to Black Puerto Rican children with afro-textured hair. Throughout Latin America, this pejorative term has been adopted, reflecting the social rejection towards afro-textured hair and the social construct of straight hair as the epitome of beauty. As a rebuttal to these issues, Arroyo Pizarro writes Pelo Bueno to visibilize affirming and essential Black Puerto Rican representation, retaliating against this unjust and dehumanizing treatment, on the grounds that these perspectives are the remainders of colonial – and colonized – mentality. See Celia M. Ayala Lugo. Deconstructing the Classics, Reclaiming our Narratives: Colonialism in Children and Young Adult Literature in the Caribbean. University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus: PhD dissertation, forthcoming.
References
Arroyo Pizarro, Yolanda. Pelo Bueno. San Juan, PR: EDP University of Puerto Rico, Inc, 2018.
Arroyo Pizarro, Yolanda. Mejorar la Raza. San Juan, PR: EDP University of Puerto Rico, Inc, 2019.
Hopkinson, Nalo. “Introduction.” In So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy. Eds. Uppinder Mehan and Nalo Hopkinson. Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004, 7–9.
Ramírez Rodríguez, Stella M, Virginia M. Burnett Disdier, and Michael Y. Cortés Bernard. “Black History, Enslavement, and Education in Puerto Rico: The Teaching of Afrodescendencia in Public Schools.” Distancing as Infinite Entanglement: Healing, Intersectionality, and Interstices in the Languages, Literatures, and Cultures of the Greater Caribbean and Beyond 2 (2021): 149–157.
Cover Photo Credit: Ángel Botello, “The Study,” Unknown.
Celia M. Ayala Lugo is a doctoral candidate of English at University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus. She has published in academic and literary journals such as York University, University of Curaçao, Arte Público Press by University of Houston, Tonguas by UPR Río Piedras, Moko Magazine, and Sábanas Magazine by UPR Mayagüez. She currently lectures at the English Department of University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez campus. Celia has published works on Puerto Rican, Latin American, Caribbean, and postcolonial children's and young adult literature, and interdisciplinary approaches with film and media, education, and English as a Second Language.