If I’d had my way, I wouldn’t ever have thought about the D.R., but in my household there was no escaping it. Those were the early years of our immigration, when my mother still kept up with the news back home. Every morning without fail, before I even had a chance to brush my teeth, she had me tune my father’s beloved radio to the Spanish stations. And, because I was the curious kid I was, I listened, and, because I couldn’t help myself, I learned.
Maybe it was the stations we were tuning in to, but they made it sound like the D.R. was on a rocket to hell. Nothing was going right: nobody had jobs and there were strikes every day and food shortages and super-sensational murders and politicians accusing one another of all sorts of lunacies. As if that weren’t apocalypse enough, this was a few months after Hurricane David more or less dropped the island on its fucking head, leaving thousands dead, hundreds of thousands homeless, and entire neighborhoods blown to splinters. Forty-plus years later and you still have Domos who can’t hear the name David without breaking out in hives.
Here was the weirdness: it didn’t matter whether the radio was talking about the annihilation of David or some grisly-ass twenty-person bus collision, my mother never reacted. Not with her face or with her words. Just kept folding clothes or washing peas, her thin I-starved-throughout-my-childhood face pinched inward. It was a kind of passivity that I didn’t understand. Why was she listening to the news if she wasn’t going to react?
Denne historien er fra November 06, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra November 06, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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The Dark Time. - On the Arctic border of Russia and Norway, an espionage war is emerging.
On the Arctic border of Russia and Norway, an espionage war is emerging. The point of contact between NATO and Russia's nuclear stronghold is the small town of Kirkenes. For years, Russia has treated the area as a laboratory, testing intelligence and influence operations before replicating them across Europe.
MIRROR IMAGES
‘A Different Man” and The Substance.”
THE FOOTBALL BRO
Pat McAfee brings a casual new style to ESPN.
OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY
Proximity to wealth proves perilous in Rumaan Alam’ novel Entitlement.”
EYES WIDE SHUT
How Monet shared a private world.
WITH THE MOSTEST
The very rich hours of Pamela Harriman.
HUGO HAMILTON AUTOBAHN
On the Autobahn outside Frankfurt. November. The fields were covered in a thin sheet of snow.
TRY IT ON
How Law Roach reimagined red-carpet style.
SORRY I'M NOT YOUR CLOWN TODAY
Bowen Yang's trip to Oz, by way of conversion therapy and S..N.L.”
SNIFF TEST
A maverick perfumer tries to make his mark on a storied fashion house.